Cognitive Distortion Quotes

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.

Emotions neither prove nor disprove facts. There was a time when any rational adult understood this. But years of dumbed-down education and emphasis on how people 'feel' have left too many people unable to see through this media gimmick.

The victim of mind-manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him, the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.

When you are angry, you make bad decisions in direct proportion to the level of your anger.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

What is madness? To have erroneous perceptions and to reason correctly from them.

Rationalization is a cover-up, a process of providing one's emotions with a false identity, of giving them spurious explanations and justifications - in order to hide one's motives, not just from others, but primarily from oneself. The price of rationalizing is the hampering, the distortion, and, ultimately, the destruction of one's cognitive faculty. Rationalization is a process not of perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.

Liberalism is a mental disorder.

If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.

We always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.

Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.

It is not events that disturb the minds of men, but the view they take of them.

Politics is irrational. Politics is about human beings with their frailties and perversions and distortions or perception, who prioritise things according to their conviction.

Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.

Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.

Perception is real even when it is not reality.

The real world is much smaller than the imaginary

There is no truth. There is only perception.

Memory creates a hallucination of the past, desire creates a hallucination of the future.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions.

Be aware that what you think, to a large extent, creates the emotions that you feel. See the link between your thinking and your emotions. Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.

I grew up loving horror films. But I had to step away since I didn't want all that negative stuff in my psyche. I didn't want to conceptualize those thoughts into my life.

As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

Judgment means that you view the world as you are, rather than as it is.