Life & Wisdom Quote by Jessamyn West

West cuts straight to the quiet, everyday mechanics of self-deception: we don’t merely have opinions, we run an internal editing desk. “We want the facts to fit the preconceptions” isn’t a lament about ignorance; it’s an indictment of desire. The verb “want” matters. She frames bias not as a glitch in reasoning but as a preference, a comfort we protect the way we protect a story about ourselves.

The line lands because it reverses a flattering myth about rational modern people. Facts are supposed to be the stern adults in the room, disciplining belief. West flips that hierarchy: preconceptions are the bosses, facts the interns. And when the interns bring bad news, we don’t fire the boss; we toss the memo. “Easier” is the blade here, suggesting that the path of least resistance is almost always psychological, not intellectual. Changing preconceptions costs status, identity, community; ignoring facts costs almost nothing in the short term.

West, writing in a 20th-century America shaped by war, mass media, and ideological sorting, is also diagnosing a civic problem. A culture can’t deliberate if its members treat reality as negotiable. Her sentence is spare, unshowy, nearly conversational, which makes it feel less like moralizing and more like an uncomfortable confession offered on behalf of all of us. The subtext isn’t “people are stupid.” It’s darker: people are strategic. We curate reality to keep our internal order intact, then call the result “common sense.”