"The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct."
"You know, the standard state for people is 'mildly pleasant.' Negative emotions are quite rare, and extremely positive emotions are rare. But people are mildly pleased most of the time, they're mildly tired a lot of the time, and they wish they were somewhere else a substantial part of the time - but mostly they're mildly pleased."
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Source: Are You Happy Now?. Interview with Jennifer Robison, www.gallup.com. February 10, 2005.
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"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact."
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