Leon Festinger

"Dissonance is not something to eliminate; it is something to listen to."

"We do not believe what we believe because it is true; we believe it because we have acted as if it were true."

"The self is not a given; it is an ongoing project of justification."

"Change comes from the unbearable need to make our actions and our beliefs cohere."

"The greatest skill is not being right but being coherent."

"Our beliefs are not conclusions we reach; they are conclusions we defend."

"The mind will work overtime to protect the image of self it has committed to."

"We are all engaged in the ongoing process of making sense of why we are the way we are."

"The uncomfortable feeling between belief and action is the alarm bell of consciousness."

"Justification is not a character flaw; it is a character building process."

"We become the authors of our own beliefs through the actions we take."

"The mind abhors contradiction more than it abhors suffering."

"The person we pretend to be is the person we are becoming."

"The way I have come to think about it is that modern man is not able to accept the meaninglessness of life."

"People's attitudes are really powerful forces that can and do shape their realities."

"When people are uncertain, they look to the actions and attitudes of others around them to determine their own."

"The presence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the organism to try to reduce it."

"Behavior that is not internally motivated tends to be short-lived and ineffective."

"What a man can be, he must be. This is the driving force of human psychology."

"The mind seeks consistency and when it finds inconsistency, it becomes deeply uncomfortable."

"To change one's behavior, sometimes you must first change what you tell yourself about yourself."

"Social comparison is the process by which we evaluate our own worth based on how we stack up against others."

"The more important and central to one's sense of self a cognition is, the more resistant it will be to change."

"We are motivated to understand ourselves and the world around us in ways that make sense."

"Discomfort and tension are the engines of psychological growth and change."

"People do not passively receive information; they actively interpret it through their existing beliefs."

"Our beliefs shape not just how we see the world, but how we act in it."

"The desire for meaning is perhaps the most fundamental human drive."

"When reality and belief clash, people will often distort reality rather than abandon their beliefs."

"Communication is not about transferring information; it's about creating shared meaning."