{"quotes":[{"text":"Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.","author":"Rebecca Goldstein","tags":["criticism","legalism","rationalization"],"id":6673,"author_id":"Rebecca+Goldstein"},{"text":"I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["artist","belief","brain","cognition","confession","consideration","creativity","creed","death","discard","funny","funny-but-true","habits","honesty","humor","instinct","intellectual","intuition","irrational","knowledge","life","logic","mind","negativity","old-habits","old-person","opinion","original-thought","positivity","precious","psychology","rational","rationalization","sentimental","stubborn","think","thinker","thinking","thought","thoughts","tradition","treasure","valuable","wisdom"],"id":6887,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"},{"text":"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.","author":"Immanuel Kant","tags":["disobedience","making-excuses","rationalization","sin"],"id":22886,"author_id":"Immanuel+Kant"},{"text":"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.","author":"Vincent H. O'Neil","tags":["horror","philosophy","rationalization","thought"],"id":86907,"author_id":"Vincent+H.+O%27Neil"},{"text":"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.","author":"Colin Quinn","tags":["apologizing","apology-and-attitude","bad-behavior","behavior","behaviors","excuses","honesty","making-excuses","rationalization","repentance","saying-sorry","sincerity","telling-the-truth"],"id":88328,"author_id":"Colin+Quinn"},{"text":"Darkness should never be an excuse to quit, for with God, darkness is the exact stuff that light was built for.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["dark","darkness","direction","excuse","excuses","god","hope","illuminate","illumination","justification","justify","light","quit","quitter","quitting","rationalization","rationalize"],"id":105316,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"},{"text":"... We [can't] escape the influence of sin in the world, but [do] we have to pay money to see and hear it firsthand?","author":"Chris Heimerdinger","tags":["rationalization","virtue"],"id":110259,"author_id":"Chris+Heimerdinger"},{"text":"If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an ‘oomph,’ this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, ‘Well, that is the funny behavior of the ‘oomph.","author":"Richard Feynman","tags":["evidence","explainability","imagination","pseudoscience","rationalization","rigor","science","scrutiny","theory"],"id":114130,"author_id":"Richard+Feynman"},{"text":"The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous.","author":"Joseph Heller","tags":["feeling","rationalization","sin"],"id":119943,"author_id":"Joseph+Heller"},{"text":"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).","author":"Suzie Burke","tags":["acting","black-hole","circus","denial","depression","despair","did","dissociative-identity-disorder","emotion","functioning","hopeless","hopelessness","mental-health","mental-illness","mpd","multiple-personality-disorder","parts","perfection","pieces","pretending","puzzle","rationalization","reality","social","social-anxiety"],"id":121678,"author_id":"Suzie+Burke"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":48,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}