Top 100 Quotes About Rationalization
#1. I've been benefited from a dictionary definition I found that reads: "Rationalization is giving a socially acceptable reason for socially unacceptable behavior, and socially unacceptable behavior is a form of insanity.
Alcoholics Anonymous
#2. To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#3. Did the true, umbilical love that bound people together for the length of their lives require a certain intellectual dislocution in order to push past our insistent rationalization and enter the rough, uneven space inside our hearts?
Reif Larsen
#4. Our common humanity is neither a rationalization nor a deduction. It is as much a given as our nationality.
Nicos Hadjicostis
#5. To use ones religion as a rationalization for lack of financial success demeans that faith.
James Cook
#6. I get sick of that old rationalization, "We're staying together because of the children." Kids couldn't be more miserable living with parents who can't stand each other. They're far better off if there's an honest, clean divorce.
Johnny Carson
#7. People never mean to do thingd that are hurtful, yet sometimes it just happens, through an intense moment, through brief rationalization, or by simply speaking words that only belong inside one's head.
Jessica Sorensen
#8. I didn't know that empty rationalization was part of your programming," said Ram.
"We would not be fit companions for human beings without it.
Orson Scott Card
#9. Don't knock rationalization. Where would we be without it? I don't know anyone who'd get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex. Have you ever gone a week without a rationalization?
Jeff Goldblum
#10. Pope Francis reminds us of Pope John XXIII because both men share the same lack of self-consciousness, and neither needs to keep his guard up through the use of psychological defenses such as rationalization, projection or intellectualization.
Eugene Kennedy
#11. Isn't it obvious in in today's world from people's preoccupation with self-medication, drug and alcohol use, rationalization and avoidance distraction that the truth doesn't just hurt, it's extremely painful.
James Turner
#13. Rationalization for bad choices will not be effective, but repentance will. Those
who repent will be particularly blessed by the Atonement.
Quentin L. Cook
#14. Paranoia is transmissible from mind to mind, but it does not go by the route of reason. It can therefore change its rationalization while remaining essentially the same.
William Nicholls
#15. The easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.
Sidney Hook
#16. All theology represents an intellectual rationalization of the possession of sacred values... Every theology... presupposes that the world must have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so that it is intellectually conceivable.
Max Weber
#17. Logic is simply the language of convenient rationalization in a pseudo-science-loving civilization.
Steven Erikson
#18. Rationalization: This is a close cousin of intellectualization. It occurs when we are so afraid of feeling pain, disappointment, or guilt that we make up a logical argument to reduce these feelings.
Shirley Impellizzeri
#19. Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.
J. Budziszewski
#20. Nationalism, on my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression.
Albert Einstein
#21. What bothers me is this idea of validation, of rationalization. The notion that some of us (regardless of what we tell ourselves) are doing this because we are not sure what else to do and it's easy to apply to and it will pay us decently and it will make us feel like we're still successful.
Marina Keegan
#22. Dishonesty is all about the small acts we can take and then think, 'No, this not real cheating.' So if you think that the main mechanism is rationalization, then what you come up with, and that's what we find, is that we're basically trying to balance feeling good about ourselves.
Dan Ariely
#23. Carmen hated the 'life is too short" rationalization. She thought it was one of the lamer excuses in the history of excuse-making. Whenever you did something because "life is too short not to," you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it.
Ann Brashares
#24. When we look at Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, we see that God's grace can survive our three-ring-circuses of compromise, rationalization and weak faith.
Carl Prude Jr.
#25. Ballet is merely a new rationalization of society's instinctive movement towards self-destruction. A dance of death for the Gadarene swine.
Eric Ambler
#26. The concept of deferred gratification, or sacrificing now to save for the future, can be helpful in setting aside money in a retirement account for old age. It can also serve as an effective rationalization for life avoidance.
Chris Guillebeau
#27. My experience is that the absence of firm prior resolve results in regular rationalization.
John Piper
#28. - I should be doing my homework now. But the way I look at it, playing in the snow is a lot more important. Out here I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life.
- Such as?
- Procrastination and rationalization.
Bill Watterson
#29. I was living a life of a lie. And I was doing a lot of things, that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly.
Tiger Woods
#30. But I contend that the disgusting behavior of many of their alleged 'holy men' relieves us of any intellectual obligation to take the stuff seriously. No amount of sanctimonious rationalization can make such behavior anything but pathological.
Robert A. Heinlein
#31. Your capacity for self-justification and rationalization." "If it were an Olympic sport, I'd medal.
Tiffany Reisz
#32. To say simply that Orientalism was a rationalization of colonial rule is to ignore the extent to which colonial rule was justified in advance by Orientalism, rather than after the fact.
Edward W. Said
#33. Companies can add value and simultaneously promote themselves if their product or service truly improves the lives of their customers. I mean really improve lives, not wishful thinking, rationalization. That's the acid test.
Guy Kawasaki
#34. Rationalization may be defined as self-deception by reasoning.
Karen Horney
#35. Most every old civilizations looks at others--members of the same species but not of the same tribe--as wild men. It's a common rationalization, because when you reduce someone else to a level of something like an animal, it makes them easier to kill.
Gene Doucette
#36. ... The individual is still obliged to confer the legitimacy of mutually antagonistic values, for even though the array of ultimate values may contract with the rationalization of the world, one is never relieved from the existential burden of choice ('taking a stand').
Nicholas Gane
#37. Stirner and Nietzsche ... reveal how prone morality is to being used as a means of rationalization, a cloak for concealing violent and brutish passions, and making their sadistic expression a virtue.
John Carroll
#38. Mediocrity is 'purpose' left to rot in minds ensnared in the deluded rationalization that vision is nothing more than a collection of fanciful dreams constructed by an imaginary God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#39. I don't think because I hang out with enough black people, I'm gonna turn black. What kind of rationalization is that? I'm just friends with people that I like. I don't care what skin color you are.
Khloe Kardashian
#40. When the lunatic is met with ideas incompatible with his delusion he distorts facts by rationalization to preserve the inner consistency of his delusions.
E. Franklin Frazier
#41. To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning.
Christopher Hitchens
#42. This is the art of rationalization, and we do it so often that some researchers believe that a majority of our time is spent rationalizing. That is, we go around much of the day lying to ourselves about why we are doing most of the things we do. When
Hugh Howey
#43. But I cheered myself up slightly with the rationalization that all new relationships - even the fictional ones - have obstacles to overcome in the beginning. I would not give up hope on this one. Not yet.
Lauren Weisberger
#44. Reason adapts impulses and beliefs into the real world; rationalization, on the other hand, adapts the concept of reality to the impulses and beliefs of the individual. Reasoning discovers the true cause of our acts, rationalization finds good reasons for justifying our acts.
Gordon Allport
#45. It is self-evident that the tabula rasa of modernization favors the optimum use of earth-moving equipment inasmuch as a totally flat datum is regarded as the most economic matrix upon which to predicate the rationalization of construction.
Kenneth Frampton
#46. We are so clothed in rationalization and dissemblance that we can recognize but dimly the deep primal impulses that motivate us.
James Ramsey Ullman
#47. There is a future for the auto parts industry, but it needs a consolidation and a rationalization of geography in that most suppliers have facilities in the U.S., although most of their customers are overseas.
Wilbur Ross
#48. Theology is the post hoc rationalization of what you want to believe.
Jerry A. Coyne
#49. Always the rationalization is the same-"Once this situation is remedied, then I will be happy." But it never works that way in reality: The goal is achieved, but the person who reaches it is not the same person who dreamed it. The goal was static, but the person's identity was dynamic.
Phillip Moffitt
#50. Rationalization is Resistance's right-hand man. Its job is to keep us from feeling the shame we would feel if we truly faced what cowards we are for not doing our work.
Steven Pressfield
#51. Your conscious life is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
#52. She is driven to seek power. She finds some way to do that and then backfills a rationalization for it afterward.
Neal Stephenson
#53. Of course, that rationalization didn't work at all. It would have helped if I'd had some Oreo cookie ice cream to eat that the same time. I've learned that self-delusion is much easier when there's something sweet in your mouth.
Lee Goldberg
#54. Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.
Ayn Rand
#55. I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.
Michael Crichton
#56. The ego is a mean mechanism which mobilizes the absolute strongest rationalization traps in order to preserve itself.
John Duover
#57. Rationalization is foreplay with one's conscience.
Doug Cooper
#58. We humans, you see, have an infinite capacity for self-rationalization.
Charles Colson
#60. The act of gaining true insights from self - reflection is a futile action for most ... as there are easy way out things like self justification, rationalization, delusions and denial which keeps us away from our true self, the inner core and thus we live contented
Anubhav Mishra
#61. Luck serves ... as rationalization for every people that is not master of its own destiny.
Hannah Arendt
#62. The forms rationalization can take are limited only by human creativity, and we are a very creative species.
Dan Gardner
#63. I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.
Gregory Maguire
#64. Curiosity, rationalization, and laziness are no match against courage, self-control, and mental toughness.
John Bytheway
#65. The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.
Max Weber
#66. Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.
Viktor E. Frankl
#67. Soothing assumptions about the good faith and shared interests of antagonists are natural to democracy, as is the desire to spend money on things other than defense. Getting a democracy to do what does not come naturally requires leadership.
George F. Will
#69. Darkness should never be an excuse to quit, for with God, darkness is the exact stuff that light was built for.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#70. I paved the path to the very place I don't want to be. But passing the blame off to someone else doesn't put me any place else.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#71. Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.
Saul Bellow
#72. When a pope's election could not be explained rationally, it was attributed to the Holy Ghost.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#73. 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
#74. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that our historical narratives, as commonly constructed, are anything more than retrofits.
Niall Ferguson
#75. You don't realize how small you really are until you're faced with something like that. We live our lives as if we're at the center of our own universe, but we're just tiny pieces of a shattered whole.
Cora Carmack
#76. 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
#78. We live Law to ourselves. Our reason is our Law.
John Milton
#79. With all the god-awful suffering in this war, I suppose somebody ought to be enjoying it.
Henry V. O'Neil
#80. The truth is, most people who do what you'd call 'wrong' do it for what they call 'right' reasons.
Brandon Sanderson
#81. While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls
Alexis De Tocqueville
#82. 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
#83. We work hard to believe that our actions really don't affect others all that much because we want the license to act without thinking all that much.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#84. Of what use was memory anyway than as a template for one's most reassuring self-deceptions!
Ashim Shanker
#85. With no one to confide in, she'd held the argument inside her own head and naturally found a way to dissolve facts into concepts and concepts into explanations that in the end explained nothing at all.
Vincent H. O'Neil
#86. To incessantly blame others for my shortcomings is cowardice borne of fear, fed by fear, and haunted by fear. To be steadfastly accountable for my shortcomings is bravery borne of God, fed by God, and blessed by God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#87. 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
#88. In a way, gluttony is an athletic feat, a stretching exercise.
John Updike
#89. An educated theologian: someone who's better at rationalizing what they're pretending to know.
Peter Boghossian
#90. We can hide a lot of stuff until God shows up, for when God shows up nothing is hidden, which includes both our embarrassment and His forgiveness.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#91. Lifting your eyes from the things of this world is an activity that must begin WHERE YOU ARE.
K.P. Yohannan
#92. How many times has our conscience firmly prompted us to 'draw the line,' and we showed up with an eraser?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#93. Sometimes evil didn't need an excuse. Sometimes evil just was.
Nenia Campbell
#95. ... We [can't] escape the influence of sin in the world, but [do] we have to pay money to see and hear it firsthand?
Chris Heimerdinger
#96. Your explanation is good, but your herring doesn't fry, as we say in Ramaldah, he exploded.
Andrew Ashling
#97. Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.
Rebecca Goldstein
#98. Sometimes, we need little lies to save our pride. And sometimes we need big lies to save our souls.
Bettie Sharpe
#99. We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
Lydia Maria Francis Child
#100. The argument that a particular project will be "self-financing" is usually the first refuge of politicians defending the indefensible.
George F. Will
