We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. We tend to think other people's mistakes are caused by character flaws while our mistakes are due to situational factors. "I had a headache on the day of the examine, but he's not very smart." Then we have the opposite. Our good behavior is attributable to fundamental traits while other people's is temporary and situational. "I'm returning this wallet to lost and found because I'm a moral and ethical person. Others do so only if they're seen picking it up." Thus we own our strengths and disavow our weaknesses. This is a big obstetrical to overcoming self-destruction behavior, it justifies all our attempts to deny or put off our need to change and rationalizes the consequences of our actions. . Richard OConnor
Some Similar Quotes
  1. One of the basic Sufi needs is to enable people to see themselves as they really are. - Idries Shah

  2. The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate. - Idries Shah

  3. All literature, or most literature, is about sex." (A. Burgess) - Blanche Bachelar

  4. Religious man was born to be saved, psychological man is born to be pleased. - Philip Rieff

  5. No matter what I said they insisted on thinking of God as something outside themselves. Something that yearns to take every indolent moron to His breast and comfort him. The notion that the effort has to be their own .. . and that the trouble... - Robert A. Heinlein

More Quotes By Richard OConnor
  1. You know very well what the right choice is, yet you keep making the wrong one.

  2. We judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their actions. We tend to think other people's mistakes are caused by character flaws while our mistakes are due to situational factors. "I had a headache on the day of the examine, but he's not very...

Related Topics