Rationalize Quotes

In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea. ~ Dave Hickey

Your moral values & ability to rationalize; not your religious beliefs or political affiliations define what you should stand for in society. ~ Mamur Mustapha

When you look at the Justice Department's report talking about the Ferguson Police Department's rampant pattern of discrimination and its excessive use of force against African-American citizens, it's hard to try to rationalize how this cesspool of racism doesn't spill over onto the individual officers. ~ Benjamin Crump

It's not simply that these "cool dudes" deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity, and indeed, to rationalize profiting from the meltdown. ~ Naomi Klein

We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic, and myth. Medicine is the oldest of the arts, and the oldest of the sciences: would one not expect it to spring from the deepest knowledge and feelings we have? ~ Oliver Sacks

All abuse, no matter what kind of abuse it is, foremost, is an assault on the mind. Because if you're going to abuse someone I think you have to invade their reality, in order to distort it, and you have to convince them of two things. You have to convince them that what you're doing isn't that bad. Which means you have to normalize it. You have to justify it, rationalize it. And the other thing you have to convince them of is that they deserve it. ~ Tara Westover

Socialization is not primarily cognitive. We are not persuaded rationally not to pee in the living room; we are required not to. We then rationalize and obey this rule even when no authority figure lurks to enforce it. ~ James W. Loewen

Part of me wanted to find out the reason why he felt he needed me to be there so badly, then rationalize it away, so he could go without me. Isn't that what you are supposed to do? Communicate, talk about your problems, then reach an agreement about dealing with them. Except I knew that would have just been the scenic route to getting my own way. ~ Kate Kerrigan

We can rationalize anything and easily quit on ourselves. Leadership is refusing to quit on others. ~ Simon Sinek

Only remember west of the Mississippi it's a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The discipline that aims to be objective and scientific can be used to rationalize religious-ethnic prejudiced and justify imperial ambitions. Israelis, Palestinians and the evangelical imperialists of nineteenth century have all been guilty of commandeering the same events and assigning them contradictory meanings and facts. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

Sometimes you cant understand why things happen the way they do.. unwillingly were forced to ride the waves.. and thats hard for us humans, considering were programmed to make sense of the chaos, rationalize with the unrational.. and right when you feel theres no life left to be drained, right before the point of giving up.. something happens. its almost super natural, this phenomenon in which there always seems to be a slight, bleak sign of hope. a small light in the dark. but its all i needed. and now that the waves have calmed.. i feel almost, warm, senseable.. i feel safe, i feel sound. and in this moment. i know where i stand. i dont question it anymore. its just where im suppose to be. ~ William James Peter O'Brien

The creature comforts we tend to rationalize as "business expenses I can write off." ~ Dave Ramsey

Your brand image is primarily an emotional construct. Emotion is probably always more powerful in swaying people than reason, but people like to be able to rationalize their choices. ~ Drayton Bird

Food is art, I believe. If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way. ~ Bryan Fuller

To recklessly excuse a failure is to believe that I've effectively erased it from the story of my life, when I've actually imprinted it in indelible ink. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

At 42, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn't rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted. ~ Wynn Bullock

rationalize that as something else ~ Peter F. Hamilton

You'd be amazed at the grand tales the human brain will throw up to make sense of something nonsensical. ~ Dianna Hardy

People are likely to act based on their emotions and then backward-rationalize. Because women have highly developed emotional circuits, they are especially susceptible to this. ~ Mystery

We take a cavalier approach to Scripture at our own peril. If the scientific and historical accounts are true, then the commandments, promises and penalties are much more so. The Bible is not just a guideline. It is the authoritative Word of God. Disobeying it has consequences. Obeying it has rewards. Yet we fudge. We compromise. We rationalize. We trade away our spiritual integrity for man's approval and as we do, we gradually erode our ability to distinguish right from wrong, to see our own failings, and to turn back in repentance to God. We simply have no idea how this cavalier attitude towards God's Word taints our witness and hinders the kingdom of God. ~ Craig Olson

The things you see in Army barracks sometimes defies logic. After a while, you give up trying to rationalize and understand such things ... you just accept them as your new reality. ~ Scott Burkett

You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don't know yourself. Others don't know you. These events show who you are. And you'll be surprised, shocked even. You'll feel the way you feel when you've done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn't possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can't believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself. ~ Viv Albertine

And did not the degeneration of religion begin with reason itself? As Santayana says, the process of degeneration of religion was due to too much reasoning: "This religion unhappily long ago ceased to be wisdom expressed in fancy in order to become superstition overlaid with reasoning." The decay of religion is due to the pedantic spirit, in the invention of creeds, formulas, articles of faith, doctrines and apologies. We become increasingly less pious as we increasingly justify and rationalize our beliefs and become so sure that we are right. ~ Lin Yutang

A recurring theme in his autobiography, as well as in his tales and almanacs, was his amusement at man's ability to rationalize what was convenient. At ~ Walter Isaacson

The mind was designed not to defend what we want, but to discover what is ultimately true, which should shape our wants and satisfy them more deeply with God. The purpose of the mind is not to rationalize subjective preferences, but to recognize objective reality and to help the heart revel in God. ~ John Piper

Animals, including people, fight harder to prevent losses than to achieve gains. In the world of territorial animals, this principle explains the success of defenders. A biologist observed that "when a territory holder is challenged by a rival, the owner almost always wins the contest - usually within a matter of seconds." In human affairs, the same simple rule explains much of what happens when institutions attempt to reform themselves, in "reorganizations" and "restructuring" of companies, and in efforts to rationalize a bureaucracy, simplify the tax code, or reduce medical costs. As initially conceived, plans for reform almost always produce many winners and some losers while achieving an overall improvement. If the affected parties have any political influence, however, potential losers will be more active and determined than potential winners; the outcome will be biased in their favor and inevitably more expensive and less effective than initially planned. Reforms commonly include grandfather clauses that protect current stake-holders - for example, when the existing workforce is reduced by attrition rather than by dismissals, or when cuts in salaries and benefits apply only to future workers. Loss aversion is a powerful conservative force that favors minimal changes from the status quo in the lives of both institutions and individuals. ~ Daniel Kahneman

The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings - as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Kids need quantity time: the myth that a small amount of focused attention is just as good simply because it's labeled quality is merely a means to rationalize being away. ~ Diane Medved

Leave it to a kid to sum up the state of my career so accurately in two words. And leave it to an adult to rationalize it in three: "It's a living. ~ A.G. Riddle

I rationalize out, well, how much help could you really be, you know? And maybe if people saw this, they'd realize the brutality of war and figure out there's got to be some better way than killing human beings who are just trying to farm a field. ~ Haskell Wexler

By and large, the world wants to move away from the nuclear era. The question is how fast and how far. In a world of sovereign nation-states, I can't rationalize any number above zero. If it's more than zero, you have to acknowledge every nation has the right to have them. ~ George Lee Butler

You cannot 'rationalize' what is not rational to begin with - as if lying were called 'truthization.' There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument - you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

A lie is my attempt to tamper with the truth so that I need not face the truth. Yet as shrewd as I think myself to be, I would be wise to understand that God designed truth as ultimately tamper-proof. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

No matter how we may rationalize the practice [of homosexuality] ... Romans 1 makes it clearly the product of a reprobate mind ... I am not exonerating all heterosexual activity ... When we come to Christ, we are called upon to repent of our sins and no longer to practice the ungodly patterns of living. ~ Billy Graham

Rationalize all you like, I don't care. All that matters is that your body reacts to mine, which means I won't have to try too hard to get you naked. ~ Jessie Donovan

The same thing is true of the experience of art. Here the scholarly research pursued by the "science of art" is aware from the start that it can neither replace nor surpass the experience of art. The fact that through a work of art a truth is experienced that we cannot attain in any other way constitutes the philosophic importance of art, which asserts itself against all attempts to rationalize it away. Hence, together with the experience of philosophy, the experience of art is the most insistent admonition to scientific consciousness to acknowledge its own limits. ~ Hans-Georg Gadamer

What Satan means to me-Satan is a stabilizing force in my life. It gives me a reason to be; it gives me-an excuse to rationalize. There is a part of me that believes he really does exist. I have my doubts, but we all do, about many things. ~ Richard Ramirez

I know many people far more upright and conscientous than I am who disagree, who think nothing of it. I know that vegetarianism runs against mankind's most casual assumptions about the world and our place within it. And I know that factory farming is an economic inevitability, not likely to end anytime soon.
But I don't answer to inevitabilities, and neither do you. I don't answer to the economy. I don't answer to tradition and I don't answer to Everyone. For me, it comes down to a question of whether I am a man or just a consumer. Whether to reason or just to rationalize. Whether to heed my conscience or my every craving, to assert my free will or just my will. Whether to side with the powerful and comfortable or with the weak, afflicted, and forgotten. ~ Matthew Scully

It is a mistake easily made by every man, saint or scholar, Church leader or day laborer. Ultimately, we come to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the real situations in which he places us daily. The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of "all the prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day" - and who then acts upon it by accepting unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God - has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. To predict what God's will is going to be, to rationalize about what his will must be, is at once a work of human folly and yet the subtlest of all temptations. The plain and simple truth is that his will is that he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people, and problems. The trick is to learn to see that - not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash of insight granted by God's grace, but every day. ~ Father Walter J. Ciszek

But is the word used before you rationalize why the situation is not your fault nor responsibility. ~ Orrin Woodward

The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

...we in the West constitute a society based on violence, oppression, misery, and domination that has led to an ongoing societal trauma from the microscale to the macroscale for all of us--whether we are the oppressors, the oppressed, or both. I see this clearly in how we collectively consume and how we rationalize why it is okay if our products come from a place of suffering, violence, and inequality. ~ A. Breeze Harper

People, even crazy, evil people, tended to believe they have a good reason for doing what they do. Though some consider religion the opiate of the masses, others use it to further their obsessions, or rationalize their crimes. ~ J.A. Konrath

I'm an expert in homo sapiens behavior. They can rationalize anything. Take war. They'll bankrupt their economies, sacrifie the best of their young, unleash a bloodbath that impresses even me, at the expense of providing shelter, food, and medicine for their own people. Compared to that, the sale of a few women is trivial. ~ Mario Acevedo

Adding to our understanding of why the brain seems undisturbed by disconnections was not only the notion that it was, in a sense, sending half its decisions into the realm of the unconscious; it was also the discovery of the "interpreter." This special left brain system kept note of all the behaviors that resulted from the many mental systems. It appeared to be the surveillance camera on our behavior, which, of course, was the evidence that a mental or cognitive act had occurred. The interpreter not only took note; it tried to make "sense" out of the behavior by keeping a running narrative going on about why a string of behaviors was occurring. It is a precious device and most likely uniquely human. It is working in us all the time as we try to explain why we like something or have a particular opinion, or rationalize something we have done. It is the interpreter device that takes the inputs from the massively modularized and automatic brain of ours and creates order from chaos. It comes up with the "makes sense" explanation that leads us to believe in a certain form of essentialism, that is, that we are a unified conscious agent. Nice try, interpreter! ~ Michael S. Gazzaniga

People sometimes rationalize their greed by saying that it is all for the good of their children but this is nothing but an excuse they use to make their despicable actions appear respectable and praiseworthy. ~ Democritus

You can minimize your sin. Rationalize your sin. Justify your sin. ~ Johnny Hunt

Another result of the War of 1812 was the loss of part of our history. As historian Bruce Johansen put it, "A century of learning [from Native Americans] was coming to a close. A century and more of forgetting--of calling history into service to rationalize conquest--was beginning." After 1815 American Indians could no longer play what sociologists call the role of conflict partner--an important other who must be taken into account--so Americans forgot that Natives had ever been significant in our history. Even terminology changed: until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European Americans. ~ James W. Loewen

When I carve out time to game, it's because I rationalize that I 'deserve it,' so I relish every minute of that 2-3 hour session. ~ Felicia Day

Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

Through Nic's drug addiction, I have learned that parents can bear almost anything ... I shock myself with my ability to rationalize and tolerate things once unthinkable. The rationalizations escalate ... It's only marijuana. He gets high only on weekends. At least he's not using hard drugs ... ~ David Sheff

I began to rationalize marrying Will[iam Houston Price]. 'He comes from a good family. A girl could do worse.' (As it turned out, I couldn't, but I didn't know that yet ~ Maureen O'Hara

An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold on to it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave. ~ Timothy Keller

Our gods, if we choose to believe in them, must be forced to live up to ethics that far surpass our own human standards. If they fall short of the ethical conditions we place upon ourselves, what use are they to us - except to rationalize our own failures? ~ Stifyn Emrys

The moment we rationalize chemistry, we risk losing it forever. ~ Jennifer Probst

We are quick to rationalize our entertainment and priorities yet are slow to commit to serving God. ~ Francis Chan

In all my time as an activist, I've never seen a single instance where the people instigating abuse, even in the worst possible cases, thought they were the 'bad guys'. There is always a righteous undertone.

Dehumanization works its mental magic, and turning the target into a 'villain' provides the attacker with the chance to be a 'hero'. You can rationalize doing all kinds of things to a symbol that you would never do to a human. The campaign becomes a false battle between good and evil, and tormenting someone is seen as a struggle over something much larger than either of you. That's the key ingredient in the magic trick that, in the abusers' minds, turns screaming at a game developer's father through a telephone into defending an entire artistic medium from censorship. ~ Zoe Quinn

No man who could rationalize the death of a child could truly be called a man at all, ~ Tom Clancy

With so much money riding on reported numbers, human nature is to manipulate them. And with so many doing it, you get Serpico effects, where everyone rationalizes that it's okay because everyone else is doing it. It is always thus. ~ Charlie Munger

Any belief worth embracing will stand up to the litmus test of scrutiny. If we have to qualify, rationalize, make exceptions for, or turn a blind eye to maintain a belief, then it may well be time to release that belief. ~ Laurie Buchanan

You think that this talk is tough? I tell you this: You have bastardized the Word of God in order to justify your fears and rationalize your insane treatment of each other. You will make God say whatever you need God to say in order to continue limiting each other, hurting each other, and killing each other in My name. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Thomas Merton to write: The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television. His head is filled with inane slogans, songs, noises, explosions, statistics, brand names, menaces, ribaldries, and cliches. Then, when the child gets to school, he learns to verbalize, rationalize, to pace, to make faces like an advertisement, to need a car and in short, to go through life with an empty head conforming to others, like himself, in togetherness.3 ~ Brennan Manning

Companies like Enron have learned that small investments in endowing chairs, sponsoring research programs or hiring moonlighting professors can return big payoffs in generating books, reports, articles, testimony and other materials to push for and rationalize public policy positions that damage the public interest but benefit corporate bottomlines. ~ Ralph Nader

You do not convince me. You rationalize your actions and because the result is favorable you become right. ~ David Gemmell

When you're tired, you rationalize. You make excuses in your mind. You say, "I'm too tired; I'm bushed; I can't do this; I'll loaf." Then you're a coward. ~ Vince Lombardi

You can lie to yourself and fool yourself and rationalize that the choice you're making is what is right and what is true and what leads to liberation, when it's actually only the fulfillment of desire. ~ Frederick Lenz

Anastasia," he whispers. "What are you doing to me?" "I could say the same to you," I whisper back. Taking a deep breath, he kisses my forehead and leaves. He strolls purposefully down the path toward his car as he runs his hand through his hair. Glancing up as he opens his car door, he smiles his breathtaking smile. My answering smile is weak, completely dazzled by him, and I'm reminded once more of Icarus soaring too close to the sun. I close the front door as he climbs into his sports car. I have an overwhelming urge to cry; a sad and lonely melancholy grips and tightens around my heart. Dashing back to my bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, trying to rationalize my feelings. I can't. Sliding to the floor, I put my head in my hands as my tears begin to flow. ~ E.L. James

Costs rationalize decisions. ~ Kirk Mahoney

I rationalize shop. I buy a dress because I need change for gum. ~ Rita Rudner

Name your nation-state, or tribe or party - you have to rationalize what you're doing. You have to go to sleep at night. Does Dick Cheney sleep at night? Does he sleep like a baby? ~ Martin Donovan

Female prophecy must be situated in the crisis of reproduction in the middle of the seventeenth century. This was the peak period for the criminalization of women in England and throughout Europe, as prosecutions for infanticide, abortion, and witchcraft reached their highest rate. It was also the period in which men began to wrest control of reproduction from women (male midwives appeared in 1625 and forceps soon thereafter); previously, "childbirth and the lying-in period were a kind of ritual collectively staged and controlled by women, from which men were usually excluded." Since the ruling class had begun to recognize its interest in increased fecundity, "attention was focussed on the 'population' as fundamental category for economic and political analysis." The simultaneous births of modern obstetrics and modern demography were responses to this crisis. Both, like the witchcraft prosecutions, sought to rationalize social reproduction in a capitalist context - that is, as the breeding of labor power. A recurring motif in the ruling-class imagination was intercourse between the English witch and the "black man" - a devil or imp. The terror was not limited to an imaginary chamber of horrors; it was an actuality of counterevolution. ~ Peter Linebaugh

Your ability to rationalize your own bad deeds makes you believe that the whole world is as amoral as you are. ~ Douglas Coupland

I've become wary of interviews in which you're forced to go back over the reasons why you made certain decisions. You tend to rationalize what you've done, to intellectually review a process that is often intuitive. ~ Peter Weir

His intelligence was just something he'd been born with. Luck of the draw, like being beautiful. It was a rationalization to say that he'd worked hard. It was like being given a fine knife and taking the trouble to polish and sharpen it: it's great that you make the effort, but someone had to give you the knife. ~ Adelle Waldman

The scriptures present a God who delights in genocide, rape, slavery, and the execution of nonconformists, and for millennia those writings were used to rationalize the massacre of infidels, the ownership of women, the beating of children, dominion over animals, and the persecution of heretics and homosexuals. Humanitarian reforms such as the elimination of cruel punishment, the dissemination of empathy-inducing novels, and the abolition of slavery were met with fierce opposition in their time by ecclesiastical authorities and their apologists. The elevation of parochial values to the realm of the sacred is a license to dismiss other people's interests, and an imperative to reject the possibility of compromise. ~ Steven Pinker

The mind's ability to rationalize it's own shortcomings is unlimited; I am no exception. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

I once heard someone say that when we rationalize, we tell "rational lies. ~ Perry Noble

For we rationalize, objectify, and personalize the process of the game exactly as we do that of a play, a drama. For, finally, it is a drama, with meaning for our lives. Why else would we watch it? ~ David Mamet

When we can communicate from the inside out, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that controls behavior, and then we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do. This is where gut decisions come from. ~ Simon Sinek

The way that I rationalize making photographs is because you're countering what's offensively mass-produced with something that you just want more people to see. ~ Mary Mattingly

And winning; that can be heavy on your back, too, like a monkey. You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse."
...
And Bert seemed to relax, knowing he had scored, had pushed his way through Eddie's consciousness and through his defenses, although Eddie still only partly understood all of what Bert had said, and was already prepared to rationalize the truth out of what he did understand. But Bert had suddenly quit pushing, and seemed now to be merely relaxing with his drink. "That's your problem," he said. ~ Walter Tevis

They'll kill you in a minute rather than deal with truth. It's more convenient because then they can forget about it and rationalize your death. ~ Frederick Lenz

Right before you head out running, it can be hard to remember exactly why you're doing it. You often have to override a nagging sense of futility, lacing up your shoes, telling yourslef that no matter how unlikely it seems right now, after you finish you will be glad you went. It's only afterward that it makes sense, although even then it's hard to rationalize why. You just feel right. After a run, you feel at one with the world, as though some unspecified, innate need has been fulfilled. ~ Adharanand Finn

How did men believe in something that preached love on one hand, yet taught destruction of unbelievers on the other? How did one rationalize belief with no proof? How could they honestly expect him to have faith in something that taught of miracles and wonders in the far past, but carefully gave excuses for why such things didn't occur in the present day? ~ Brandon Sanderson

If she possessed a genius - and a growing number of us think she did - it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. Or to be fettered. In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed. ~ Chang-rae Lee

The only thing rational about man, the rational animal, is his ability to rationalize his own present position. ~ Allen MacDiarmid

It needs fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice. ~ Eric Hoffer

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down. ~ Lauren Oliver

Churches that are filled with self-righteous, exclusive, insecure, angry, moralistic people are extremely unattractive. Their public pronouncements are often highly judgmental, while internally such churches experience many bitter conflicts, splits, and divisions. When one of their leaders has a moral lapse, the churches either rationalize it and denounce the leader's critics, or else they scapegoat him. Millions of people raised in or near these kinds of churches reject Christianity at an early age or in college largely because of their experience. For the rest of their lives, then, they are inoculated against Christianity. If you are a person who has been disillusioned by such churches, anytime anyone recommends Christianity to you, you assume they are calling you to adopt "religion." Pharisees and their unattractive lives leave many people confused about the real nature of Christianity. ~ Timothy Keller

Shit, I'd heard all the songs about love but never really got them before. Didn't understand that it can come out of nowhere, grab you in a chokehold, then bodyslam you into the road until you give in to it, accept it for what it is: an unpredictable, uncontrollable force of nature that tames you. You don't choose it, you can't rationalize it, and you sure as shit don't know when it's going to hit. ~ Nikki Pink

You can't do much in this world without hurting someone else. Every time you take a breath it's to the disadvantage of someone or something. And then you have to decide how and in which way you will hurt others. And I find it quite agreeable trying not to hurt anyone, but I have made this decision about the fish. It's a pity about them, but also, if I pull up a fish, then it makes space for another fish who will be so happy to get more space. And he will become a very happy little fish. You can rationalize it in a number of different ways - maybe the fish I pull up is depressed and wants to end his life, but he hasn't really been able to do it. It's not easy if you're a fish. I wouldn't know what a big salmon who's really tired of it all would do. ~ Lars Von Trier

Common phrases narcissists use and what they actually mean:

1. I love you.
Translation: I love owning you. I love controlling you. I love using you. It feels so good to love-bomb you, to sweet-talk you, to pull you in and to discard you whenever I please. When I flatter you, I can have anything I want. You trust me. You open up so easily, even after you've already been mistreated. Once you're hooked and invested, I'll pull the rug beneath your feet just to watch you fall.

2. I am sorry you feel that way.
Translation: Sorry, not sorry. Let's get this argument over with already so I can continue my abusive behavior in peace. I am not sorry that I did what I did, I am sorry I got caught. I am sorry you're calling me out. I am sorry that I am being held accountable. I am sorry you have the emotions that you do. To me, they're not valid because I am entitled to have everything I want – regardless of how you feel about it.

3. You're oversensitive/overreacting.
Translation: You're having a perfectly normal reaction to an immense amount of bullshit, but all I see is that you're catching on. Let me gaslight you some more so you second-guess yourself. Emotionally invalidating you is the key to keeping you compliant. So long as you don't trust yourself, you'll work that much harder to rationalize, minimize and deny my abuse.

4. You're crazy.
Translation: I am a master of creating chaos to provoke you. I love it when you r ~ Shahida Arabi

Well, you can try to rationalize it all you want, you can invent all kinds of noble-sounding pretexts, but in the end, a scam is a scam. ~ Haruki Murakami

I never went to college - I don't believe in college for writers. The thing is very dangerous. I believe too many professors are too opinionated and too snobbish and too intellectual, and the intellect is a great danger to creativity … because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth - who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I've had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads "Don't think!" You must never think at the typewriter - you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. ~ Ray Bradbury

I'd go to a party and promise Michael I wouldn't drink too much. He'd plead: "Just take it easy, okay? Watch yourself," and I'd swear: "I won't. I don't want to get too drunk." I'd mean that, of course, and I'd start out by measuring myself: one glass of wine the first half hour, one glass the second, and so on. But then something would snap, some uncontrollable process would kick in, and all of a sudden it would be two or three hours later and I'd be on my sixth or tenth or God knows what glass of wine, and I'd be plastered. I couldn't account for it, couldn't explain it, couldn't even rationalize it, although I struggled mightily to. I seemed to get drunk, blind drunk, against my will. ~ Caroline Knapp

Man has an infinite capacity to rationalize - especially when it comes to what he wants to eat. ~ Cleveland Amory

Note that the best rationalizations are those that have an element of truth. Whether you vote or not will almost certainly have no influence on the outcome of an election. Nor will the amount of carbon you personally put into the atmosphere make a difference in the fate of the planet. And perhaps it really should be up to governments rather than the charities that are soliciting your contributions to feed the hungry and homeless in America or save children around the world from crushing poverty and abuse. But the fact that these statements are true doesn't mean they aren't also rationalizations that you and others use to justify questionable behavior.

This uncomfortable truth is crucial to an understanding of the link between rationalization and evil - an understanding that starts with the awareness that sane people rarely, if ever, act in a truly evil manner unless they can successfully rationalize their actions... [The] process of rationalizing evil deeds committed by whole societies is a collective effort rather than a solely individual enterprise. ~ Thomas Gilovich

One simple answer is that there has been a massive rise in the incidence of sanctimony and smugness among the successful that has nothing to do with any change in the underlying reality. Rather, it has been stimulated by politicians who have realized that it is possible to win power by recruiting the most economically successful forty per cent or so of the population in a crusade to roll back the gains made by their fellow citizens in the previous forty years. And how better to rationalize this than to tell people that they deserve the incomes that the market generates? ~ Brian M. Barry

You always know more than you think you know without being aware of it. You always remember best what has hurt most.
Memory is a reflex of the pain. Knowledge is the memory of the pain combined with the unconsciousness which we 'rationalize' via dreams or by means of reading literature. It is impossible to learn from someone else's experience unless we don't assume this experience as our own's, which we can achieve only by living it anew and from scratch. We can not live our lives at someone else's expense. Only life fraught with dangers and risks and lived as your own's deserves its name. Only selfish people do not live their lives as if they do not belong entirely to them. Cowardice equals a life that you refuse to live at its fullest and at its most dangerous. ~ Martin Walser