Mere lack of success does not discredit a method, for there are many things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened.

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

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

Man has long found solace in good talk to offset bad conduct.

In its amplest meaning History includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth.

We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.