302nd post

If you didn’t sell your shares when their value was cut in half, it’s unlikely that you’ll sell them after they’ve lost three-quarters of their value—because after enduring so much loss, it’s too painful to admit that the stock will never bring you any profit.

A person who has spent many years of their life based on false beliefs and endured many hardships and costs along the way, even if presented with hundreds of clear reasons proving their beliefs were wrong, will find it very difficult to abandon those beliefs.

Admitting the truth would mean accepting that all the pain and effort they went through during the best years of their life were for nothing.

The more you invest—whether with time, money, or emotion—in something, the more committed you become to it, and the stronger your faith in it grows.

The priests of old knew that if they could persuade people to sacrifice one of their precious cows to the temple, those same people would bring another cow the following year, even if their prayers hadn’t been answered.

Because to regret the sacrifice would be to admit that they destroyed something precious for nothing.

When we’ve paid a price for something, even if that thing turns out to be foolish, it becomes extremely difficult to accept that it was a mistake.

For a mother who has lost her child in war, it’s unbearably hard to believe that the true purpose of that war was merely to sell weapons.

That’s why the worse things get, the more stubbornly people cling to the same disastrous path.