Quotes About Rationalizing

#1. The stubborn refusal to admit a failure due to sin can become a big problem because it makes you spend time rationalizing rather than learning from your mistakes and moving on.

Anonymous

#2. What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwards?

Larry Wall

#3. The human mind is capable of rationalizing any behavior.

Michael Bunker

#4. For it seems to me that the first responsibility of a man of faith is to make his faith really part of his own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it.

Thomas Merton

#5. Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.

Robert A. Heinlein

#6. We are not rational animals; we are rationalizing animals.

Hugh Howey

#7. Rather than a plausible explanation for how we got to be the way we are, the standard narrative is exposed as contemporary moralistic bias packaged to look like science and then projected upon the distant screen of prehistory, rationalizing the present while obscuring the past. Yabba dabba doo.

Cacilda Jetha

#8. Humans believed they thought things consciously when most of the time they were simply rationalizing instinctive reactions as basic as the amoeba's, and after those reactions had already taken place.

Karen Traviss

#9. In the early stages of wealth, up to 10 years after individuals became very rich, they display a bit of reluctance to spend money. It's a lot easier rationalizing spending a lot for a house.

Frederick Winslow Taylor

#10. We are all very good at rationalizing our actions so that they are in line with our selfish motives.

Dan Ariely

#11. My worst habit is my fear & my destructive rationalizing.

Sylvia Plath

#12. Whether out of inertia or selfishness, whether out of fear or a simple lack of moral imagination, we so often spend our lives as if in a fog, accepting injustice, rationalizing inequity, tolerating the intolerable

Barack Obama

#13. The proud do not change to improve, but defend their position by rationalizing. Repentance means change, and it takes a humble person to change.

Ezra Taft Benson

#14. You with your deep philosophical ramblings."
"You like my deep philosophical ramblings. "
"Not when they interfere with my ridiculous rages. It's extremely hard to flounce away with any dignity when you're so busy rationalizing.

G.A. Aiken

#15. I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... procrastinating and rationalizing.

Bill Watterson

#16. Rationalizing is another road that leads to hell.

Shannon L. Alder

#17. Governments and the military purport to protect the public from enemies, and if there were no enemies they would have to invent some, for the simple purpose of rationalizing their existence ...

Laurance Labadie

#18. Human beings aren't rational animals; we're rationalizing animals who want to appear reasonable to ourselves.

Elliot Aronson

#19. Everybody always feels that they're right even if they're wrong and that's what a whole actor's career is built around rationalizing your way into whatever character you're playing.

Clint Eastwood

#20. Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error.

James Harvey Robinson

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. An educated theologian: someone who's better at rationalizing what they're pretending to know.

Peter Boghossian

#24. Stop rationalizing, stop stewing. Get up out of your chair and start doing.

Denis Waitley

#25. Of course the self-serving bias is something you want to get out of yourself. Thinking that what's good for you is good for the wider civilization and rationalizing all these ridiculous conclusions based on this subconscious tendency to serve one's self is a terribly inaccurate way to think.

Charlie Munger

#26. 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

#27. My worst habit is my fear & my destructive rationalizing.

Sylvia Plath

#28. Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we're afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.

Seth Godin

#29. Eliminate the word "impossible" from your conversation, drop it from your thoughts, erase it from your attitudes. Stop rationalizing it. Cease excusing it. Substitute for it that bright and shining word ... POSSIBLE."

Norman Vincent Peale

#30. It was the Almighty who decreed that men and women must cover their nakedness by wearing proper and modest clothing. No amount of rationalizing can change God's laws. No amount of fashion designing can turn immodesty into virtue, and no amount of popularity can change sin into righteousness.

Mark E. Petersen

#31. Southerners have mastered picking, choosing, and rationalizing religious texts to fit their social agenda better than their own mother's fried chicken recipe.

Maggie Young

#32. The truth is if you can eat just a serving size, you can eat anything. But we all know how those harmless treats can call out your name all night long, and rationalizing in the middle of the night is very easy.

Marissa Jaret Winokur

#33. People are less rational than they are adept at rationalizing--explaining away discrepancies between their private morality and actions contrary to it.

Philip G. Zimbardo

#34. Mind is tricky. If I say this is very difficult, the mind says, "This is so difficult it is beyond you." If I say this is very simple, the mind says, "This is so simple that only fools can believe in it." And mind goes on rationalizing things, always escaping from doing.

Osho

#35. bullshit french post-war rationalizing

Woody Allen

#36. Little white lies are told by humans all the time. Indeed, lying is often how we get through each day in a happy little bubble. We spend time and energy rationalizing our own behaviors, beliefs and decision-making processes.

Barry Ritholtz

#37. When I repent, here is where it starts. I try to name my sin as honestly and as specifically as possible. Here is what repenting is not. It is not excusing my sin, minimizing my sin, it's not rationalizing my sin ... Repentance is getting painfully honest with God.

John Ortberg

#38. A critic is a person who rationalizes his likes and dislikes in such impressive language that the layman thinks he is reasoning instead of rationalizing.

Helen McCloy

#39. Rationalizing is the bringing of ideals down to the level of one's conduct. Repentance is the bringing of one's conduct up to the level of his ideals.

Spencer W. Kimball

#40. The more you rationalize, the more you move farther away from your authentic self.

Shannon L. Alder

#41. You can rationalize anything, but that is not total honesty, only your version of it based on your upbringing and experiences outside of everyone else's reality.

Shannon L. Alder