Friday, June 4, 2010

Believing Things Which We Know to Be Untrue


We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.  Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
--George Orwell (1946)


See Also:
Denialism
Global Warming and Cognitive Dissonance
The Whole Problem with the World
Bertrand Russell


0 comments:

Post a Comment