People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how people prefer comforting falsehoods over the uncomfortable truths that require critical thinking and accountability.
Brooks Atkinson's quote illustrates a common human tendency to embrace false beliefs as they offer an easy escape from the complexities of reality. It suggests that the avoidance of self-reflection and personal responsibility leads individuals to find solace in untruths, thereby inhibiting their ability to think critically and confront challenging ideas.
In practice
In a discussion on cognitive biases, this quote can serve as a reminder to critically evaluate our beliefs.
This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, businessmen who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.
In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.
The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
…not a fighter… an adventurer. He doesn’t attack, he engages; He doesn’t defend, he expands; He doesn’t destroy, he transforms; He doesn’t reject, he explores; ….
Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner. We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events.
The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.
Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
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