Douglas Adams Quotes

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

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

How baffling it was that even the most cunning and clever people would frequently see only what they wanted to see, and would rarely look beyond the thinnest of facades. Or they would ignore reality, dismissing it as the facade. And then, when their whole world fell to pieces...they would tear their topknots or rend their clothes and bewail their karma, blaming gods or kami or luck or their lords or husbands or vassals-anything or anyone-but never themselves.

I know all too well that people only see what they want to see and remember only what they want to remember.

There are many people out there who don't even think of themselves as being averse to facts, but the truth is, they are not getting it.

She was reflecting back on a truth she had learned over the years: that people heard what they wanted to hear, saw what they wanted, believed what they wanted.

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.

I think denial's fascinating. It's a jokey word, but it really happens, and sometimes in enormous ways.

… facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, they generally run away.

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.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

People readily believe what they want to believe.

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. One often obtains a clue to a person's nature by discovering the reasons for his or her imperviousness to certain impressions.

To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion.

Some people have a peculiar faculty for denying facts.

People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?

Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn.

I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.

We make up any excuse to preserve myths about people we love, but the reverse is also true; if we dislike an individual we adamantly resist changing our opinion, even when somebody offers proof of his decency, because it's vital to have myths about both the gods and devils in our lives.

What you see is not what we see. What you see is distracted by memory, by being who you are, all this time, for all these years.

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.

But people as a rule believe only what they want to believe, and if you tell them anything else they'll call you a trouble-maker and get rid of you and never give you your job back, even if what you said is proved spot on right by time.

The easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.