Distorted Thinking Quotes

“... campus administrators were modeling distorted thinking. Two categories of First Amendment cases on campus encourage this kind of thinking quite directly: overreaction and overregulation.”
― Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

“Traumatized behavior and Supremacy ideology resemble each other [and] ...produce
distorted thinking that seeks unreasonable levels of control over other people and does not tolerate self-criticism or difference.”
― Sarah Schulman, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair

“Just as animals with no capacity for anxiety were gobbled up by predators long ago, without the capacity for sadness, we and other animals would probably commit rash acts and repeat costly mistakes. But we should be skeptical of any theory that claims a trait is always useful or adaptive. Periods of low mood potentially create vulnerabilities. Among the most salient are behavioral vulnerabilities. Doing nothing can be risky; in times past, prolonged immobility could increase the risk of being eaten by a predator. Or a window of opportunity may close. Severely depressed people are capable of breathtakingly distorted thinking that appears to be the polar opposite of depressive realism.”
― Jonathan Rottenberg, The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic