Rationalization Quotes

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one’s emotions.”
― Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It?

“We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.”
― Lydia Maria Child

“At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career.
During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer.
I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole.
p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).”
― Suzie Burke, Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse

“Rationalizing is not a tool for penetration of reality but a post-factum attempt to harmonize one's own wishes with existing reality.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Sometimes, we need little lies to save our pride. And sometimes we need big lies to save our souls.”
― Bettie Sharpe, Ember

“He had a clear conscience. Never used it.”
― Stanisław Jerzy Lec, More Unkempt Thoughts

“There's never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn't think he was fully justified. That's a mental trick called rationalizing, and it's done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.”
― Leigh Brackett, The Long Tomorrow

“Small wonder our national spirit is husk empty. We have more information but less knowledge. More communication but less community. More goods but less goodwill. More of virtually everything save that which the human spirit requires. So distracted have we become sating this new need or that material appetite, we hardly noticed the departure of happiness”
― Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks

“Of course, that rationalization didn't work at all. It would have helped if I'd had some Oreo cookie ice cream to eat at the same time. I've learned that self-delusion is much easier when there's something sweet in your mouth.”
― Lee Goldberg, Mr. Monk on the Couch

“These prin­ciples laid down as in variable rules: that one must pay a card sharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat any one, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Vronsky felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“I think the world honestly would be a much healthier place if instead of trying to find rationalizations for our bad behavior we would just say, "I was an asshole. Sure, there were reasons behind it, but that doesn't matter.”
― Colin Quinn, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America

“Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.”
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

“An educated theologian: someone who's better at rationalizing what they're pretending to know.”
― Peter Boghossian

“Lifting your eyes from the things of this world is an activity that must begin WHERE YOU ARE.”
― K.P. Yohannan, Living in the Light of Eternity: Discovering God's Design for Your Life

“ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crises with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.”
― William Faulkner, Light in August

“Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one's most reassuring self-deceptions!”
― Ashim Shanker, Only the Deplorable

“The human brain can protect us from seeing and feeling what it believes may be too uncomfortable for us to tolerate. It can lead us to deny, defend, minimize, or rationalize away something that doesn’t fit our worldview.”
― Bandy X Lee, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President

“Your theology won't always work toward your obedience, because your use of theology is dictated by the condition of your heart. If your heart is not submitting to the plan of God, you will actually use your theology to justify things that should not be justified.”
― Paul David Tripp

“If now we attend to ourselves on occasion of any transgression of duty, we shall find that we in fact do not will that our maxim should be universal law, for that is impossible for us; on the contrary, we will that the opposite should remain a universal law, only we assume the liberty of making an exception in our own favor or (just for this time only) in favor of our inclination. Consequently, if we considered all cases from one and the same point of view, namely, that of reason, we should find a contradiction in our own will, namely, that a certain principle should be objectively necessary as a universal law, and yet subjectively should not be universal, but admit of exceptions. As, however, we at one moment regard our action from the point of view of a will wholly conformed to reason, and then again look at the same action from the point of view of a will affected by inclination, there is not really any contradiction, but an antagonism of inclination to the precept of reason, whereby the universality of the principle is changed into mere generality, so that the practical principle of reason shall meet the maxim half way. Now, although this cannot be justified in our own impartial judgement, yet it proves that we do really recognize the validity of the categorical imperative and (with all respect for it) only allow ourselves a few exceptions which we think unimportant and forced from us.”
― Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals

“Ignoring is that magical slight-of-hand where we make something disappear by simply ceasing to acknowledge its existence. But we must remember that slight-of-hand never results in dead-and-gone.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The President looked out of his window. He was not very happy. “I worry about Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and their lover, Snow White. I sense that all is not well with them. Now, looking out over this green lawn, and these fine rosebushes, and into the night and the yellow buildings, and the falling Dow Jones Index and the screams of the poor, I am concerned. I have many important things to worry about, but I worry about Bill and the boys too. Because I am the President. Finally. the President of the whole fucking country. And they are Americans, Bill, Hubert, Henry, Kevin, Edward, Clem, Dan and Snow White. They are Americans. My Americans.”
― Donald Barthelme, Snow White

“We are somehow led to believe that the justification of what we’re ‘sowing’ has the power to change the nature of what we’re sowing. Subsequently, we find ourselves shocked that the justifications didn’t change the nature of what we ‘reaped.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“It is a sad day when I am forced to yet again traverse the bottom of some cliff and help heal the wreckage experienced by those individuals who had repeatedly declared that there was no cliff. And as for me, I have had far too many sad days. But none are ever so sad that I will stop declaring the reality of the cliff.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Blindness is the convenience of ignorance for those who find the truth distasteful.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“When the bottom falls out and you’re in a free-fall, you can certainly pull the ripcord of blame. However, blame never packed a chute because it had no idea that it got on a plane.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Arrogance admits nothing.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Fiction as a means of avoiding fact is the fiction of fiction.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If we choose to fabricate a fictional narrative in order to excuse the choices that we make, we are placing others in a position where they must protect themselves from our narrative. And in doing that, we have created the enemy that was not.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The most difficult part of fighting any battle is the acknowledgement of its existence.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough