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 believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.
The opposite of compromise is character.
God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness . He is not in the general. He is in the particular.
Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.
In order to exercise the right to freedom of speech conferred by the Constitution, one should fulfill the social responsibility of a Chinese citizen.
He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor.
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