Greg Thielmann Quotes

In intelligence you can justify almost anything you want to if you go about it with enough zeal and effort which is what happened.

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.

Under George W. Bush, the politization of intelligence tested new depths …. The pro-war wind that the Bush Administration policy makers had generated … was strong, unrelenting and inescapable.

Iraq is an unjust war. I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

A man sees what he wants to see, And disregards the rest.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

I think if somebody is so set in their ways about what they feel about something - and you get this a lot in academia, of course, and also different sorts of journalism too - you're going to sweep under the carpet the facts that don't suit your thesis. And I think that happens quite a lot in the courtroom, for instance.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. The moment we want to disbelieve anything we have previously believed we suddenly discover not only that there is a mass of evidence against it but that this evidence was starting us in the face all the time.

Our pride is tied up in being right. We tend to favor data that confirm our beliefs, so we don't see alternatives. Too often, leaders practice defense routines that become self-reinforcing.

All of us show bias when it comes to what information we take in. We typically focus on anything that agrees with the outcome we want.

According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.

If you're saying something that people don't want to hear or accept, a significant proportion of them will reply with hostility. Not because they know the facts, or because they have researched it themselves, but because they're so psychologically involved in believing good news that they will oppose it with a reflex.

People believe what they want to believe.

In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized.

A clearer form of politicization (of intelligence) is the inconsistent review of analysis: reports that conform to policy preferences have an easier time making it through the gauntlet of coordination and approval than ones that do not.

For most politicians, facts lead to conclusions. For George W. Bush, conclusions lead to facts.

In an ideological, polarized political environment, people see the reality that they want to see.

The CIA’s intelligence was in many cases simply Bill Casey’s ideology.

A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it…. Along the same lines, people who aren't talented in a given area tend not to be able to recognize the talents or good ideas of others, from co-workers to politicians. This may impede the democratic process, which relies on citizens having the capacity to identify and support the best candidate or policy.

We are so ready to find evidence agaist our political opponents that it snuffs out our charity and possible doubt.

In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads.

True believers just don't see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn't be true believers anymore.

We hew and saw and plane facts to make them dovetail with our prejudices, so that they become mere ornaments with which to parade our objectivity.

Men who have excessive faith in their theories ... make poor observations, because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their object, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it and carefully setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat

It is in the nature of human beings to bend information in the direction of desired conclusions.