Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
People see in stories what they’re looking for, my young friend.
No man … ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.
Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories.
I don't think being a Muslim or being a non-Muslim has been an advantage or disadvantage.
Making matters worse is people's natural inclination to be easy on themselves, judging themselves according to their good intentions-while holding others to a higher standard and judging them by their worst actions.
We always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.
We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.
A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.
Most people use two totally different sets of criteria for judging themselves versus others. We tend to judge others according to their actions. It's very cut-and-dried. However, we judge ourselves by our intentions. Even if we do the wrong thing, if we believe our motives were good, we let ourselves off the hook. And we are often willing to do that over and over before requiring ourselves to change.
Is journalism a profession that serves the public by maintaining high standards, or is it a social construct that should be redesigned to directly serve certain social goods? Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.
You take a 30-year-old. To him, history began the day he was born. He doesn't know how cold it was 70 years ago unless he's told. He doesn't care. He thinks what's happening now is either the best or the worst, whatever it is, ever. Everybody thinks that.
Men's faults do seldom to themselves appear.
We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.
There are three sides to every story: my side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently.
I'm not a reader myself, so I don't expect anyone else to be.
What the sayer of praise is really praising is himself, by saying implicitly, My eyes are clear." Likewise, someone who criticizes is criticizing himself, saying implicitly, "I can't see very well with my eyes so inflamed.
You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
He [Winston Churchill] refers to a defeat as a disaster as though it came from God, but to a victory as though it came from himself.
But I think I’m coloured by my own wishes, & experimental mood.
You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.
He that is warme, thinkes all so.
