It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.

That’s not how human psychology works. No, we tend to do lots of things without knowing why. We need excuses, though, so we rationalize! If an obvious reason for our behavior isn’t readily available, we invent one, preferably one that helps us think better of ourselves.

Motivations and desires affect our perceptions. We don’t necessarily see things as they are. We see them as we are.

The use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices and follies, and also our fears.

Whenever we ascribe a motive to the other person, as in “you are doing this because...,” we discard curiosity and immobilize compassion.

We are drawn towards a thing, either because there is some good we are seeking from it, or because we cannot do without it. Sometimes the two motives coincide. Often however they do not. Each is distinct and quite independent. We eat distasteful food, if we have nothing else, because we cannot do otherwise. A moderately greedy man looks out for delicacies, but he can easily do without them. If we have no air we are suffocated, we struggle to get it, not because we expect to get some advantage from it but because we need it. We go in search of sea air without being driven by any necessity, because we like it. In time it often comes about automatically that the second motive takes the place of the first. This is one of the great misfortunes of our race. A man spokes opium in order to attain to a special condition, which he thinks superior; often, as time goes on, the opium reduces him to a miserable condition which he feels to be degrading; but he is no longer able to do without it.

I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else.

What people accept as justification shows how they think and live.

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are.

most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

This is important because our behavior is affected by our assumptions or our perceived truths. We make decisions based on what we think we know.

What society calls virtue is for the most part a mere phantom conjured by our passions; we give it a respectable name so that we can do what we like with impunity.

The truth is that some people appear to be almost entirely motivated by their religious beliefs. Absent those beliefs, their behavior would make absolutely no sense; with them, it becomes perfectly understandable, even rational.

Whatever pretext we give to our afflictions it is always interest or vanity that causes them.