Saturday Quote-a-thon: Self-Deception

In honor of my frisbee match with Relax Max...

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
--Gustave Flaubert

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion -- in the long run, these are the only people who count.
--Robert Heinlein

Experience teaches only the teachable.
--Aldous Huxley

You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.
--Jean Kerr

Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
--Abraham Lincoln

You can shoot the tiger, or stay out of his way, but you cannot pronounce him a vegetarian.
--Richard Mitchell

The worst-tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong.
--Addison Mizner

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
--George Orwell

It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.
--Jawaharlal Nehru

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
--Bertrand Russell

All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based -- or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug -- it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.
--Carl Sagan

The fact that you are just dying to believe something is not hard evidence -- except perhaps about your state of mind.
--Thomas Sowell

He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.
--Anthony Trollope

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
--Mark Twain

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
--Bill Vaughan

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis

A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
-- Edward Teller

An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.
-- John Cage

A poor idea well written is more likely to be accepted than a good idea poorly written.
-- Isaac Asimov

Fancies may be as you please but facts are as the Universe pleases.
-- Robert Kaplan

How little do they see what is, who frame their hasty judgments upon that which seems.
-- Robert Southey

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
-- Laurens van der Post