Michael J

“People feel tremendous pressure to settle down in some sort of permanent space and fill it up with stuff, but deep inside they resent those structures, and they're scared to death of that stuff because they know it controls them and restricts their movements.”
― Tom Robbins, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates

“In the horrifying calculus of self-deception, the greater the pain we inflict on others, the greater the need to justify it to maintain our feelings of decency and self-worth.”
― Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

“Prejudices emerge from the disposition of the human mind to perceive and process information in categories. “Categories” is a nicer, more neutral word than “stereotypes,” but it’s the same thing. Cognitive psychologists consider stereotypes to be energy-saving devices that allow us to make efficient decisions on the basis of past experience; help us quickly process new information and retrieve memories; make sense of real differences between groups; and predict, often with considerable accuracy, how others will behave or how they think.24 We wisely rely on stereotypes and the quick information they give us to avoid danger, approach possible new friends, choose one school or job over another, or decide that that person across this crowded room will be the love of our lives.”
― Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

“This habit starts awfully early. Social psychologist Marilynn Brewer, who has been studying the nature of stereotypes for many years, once reported that her daughter returned from kindergarten complaining that “boys are crybabies.”25 The child’s evidence was that she had seen two boys crying on their first day away from home. Brewer, ever the scientist, asked whether there hadn’t also been little girls who cried. “Oh yes,” said her daughter. “But only some girls cry. I didn’t cry.” Brewer’s little girl was already dividing the world, as everyone does, into us and them. Us is the most fundamental social category in the brain’s organizing system, and it’s hardwired.”
― Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts