86 Quotes About Rationalization

Has it not ‘dawned’ on us that many of the things that we incessantly blame others for are actually things that our actions originally set in motion? Or, are we too weak to experience a ‘dawning’ of that sort?

Words frozen in religious texts, when not allowed to be interpreted in the current context, lead to irrationality with religious leaders having the exclusive authority of rationalizing it.

While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls

The ego is a mean mechanism which mobilizes the absolute strongest rationalization traps in order to preserve itself.

Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.

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.

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.

People had a drive to immortalize their past, even the evil stuff, like Abu Ghraib or the Holocaust. They liked to take pictures, keep journals, because they believed in what they were doing. No one, Naomi had learned, did evil without believing it was right at the time. Maybe this was why it was nearly impossible to talk them out of it?

Sometimes we have to pretend that we don’t care in order to protect ourselves from the fact that we do. And the thing that we have to pretend the most is that this actually works.