Scott Adams

“The ability to work hard and make sacrifices comes naturally to those who know exactly what they want.”

“A woman needs to be told that you would sacrifice anything for her. A man needs to be told he is being useful. When the man or woman strays from that formula, the other loses trust. When trust is lost, communication falls apart.”

“Men believe value is created by accomplishment, and they have objectives for the women in their lives. If awoman meets the objectives, he assumes she loves him. If she fails to meet the objectives, he will assume she does notlove him. The man assumes that if the woman loved him she would have tried harder and he always believes his objectives for her are reasonable.”

“Women define themselves by their relationships and men define themselves by whom they are helping. Women believe value is created by sacrifice. If you are willing to give up your favorite activities to be with her, she will trust you. If being with her is too easy for you, she will not trust you.”

“Women believe that men are, in a sense, defective versions of women, Men believe that women are defective versions of men. Both genders are trapped in adelusion that their personal viewpoints are universal. That viewpoint—that each gender is a defective version of theother—is the root of all misunderstandings.”

“It is a wondrous human characteristic to be able to slip into and out of idiocy many times a day without noticing the change or accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the process.”

“Sometimes what seems to be a difference in opinions is in fact just a difference in definitions.”

“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It isalso a way of signaling the importance of another person byshowing your willingness to give that person your rarestresource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversationreminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected insome way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce.Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”

“Your brain can only process a tiny portion of your environment,It risks being overwhelmed by the volumeof information that bombards you every waking moment.Your brain compensates by filtering out the 99.9 percent ofyour environment that doesn’t matter to you.”

“The process of concentrating on the goalevery day greatly increases the likelihood of noticing anopportunity in the environment. The coincidence will createthe illusion that writing down the goal causes the environmentto produce opportunities. But in reality the only thingthat changes is the person’s ability to notice the opportunities.”

“People who do affirmations will have the sensation thatthey are causing the environment to conform to their will.This is an immensely enjoyable feeling because the illusionof control is one of the best illusions you can have.”

“If, as you say, our minds are delusiongenerators, then we’re all like blind and deaf sea captainsshouting orders into the universe and hoping it makes a difference.We have no way of knowing what really works andwhat merely seems to work. So doesn’t it make sense to tryall the things that appear to work even if we can’t be sure?”

“Awareness is about unlearning. It is the recognitionthat you don’t know as much as you thought you knew.”

“But never being wrong is no proof thatthe method of testing is sound for all cases”

“It is a human tendency tobecome what you attack.”

“If you are proven to be right a hundred times in a row,no amount of evidence will convince you that you are mistakenin the hundred-and-first case. You will be seduced byyour own apparent infallibility. Remember that all scientificexperiments are performed by human beings and the resultsare subject to human interpretation. The human mind is adelusion generator, not a window to truth. Everyone, includingskeptics, will generate delusions that match their views.That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics arenot exempt from self-delusion.”

“Skeptics,” he said, “suffer from the skeptics’ disease—the problem of being right too often.”

“The rest of the universe is like the coin. The events ofthe past appear to cause the present, but every time we popback into existence we are subject to a new set of probabilities.Literally anything can happen.”

“simplicity is not proof of truth. But since we cannever understand true reality, if two models both explain thesame facts, it is more rational to use the simpler one. It is amatter of convenience.”

“Because everything you perceive is a metaphor forsomething your brain is not equipped to fully understand.God is as real as the clothes you are wearing and the chairyou are sitting in. They are all metaphors for something youwill never understand.”

“Everything that motivates living creatures is based onsome weakness or flaw. Hunger motivates animals. Lustmotivates animals. Fear and pain motivate animals. A Godwould have none of those impulses. Humans are driven byall of our animal passions plus loftier-sounding things likeself-actualization and creativity and freedom and love”

“Clinical psychologists have proven that ordinary peoplewill alter their memories of the past to make them fittheir perceptions. It is the way all normal brains functionunder ordinary circumstances.”

“An insane person believes his world is consistent. If hebelieves the government is trying to kill him, he will seeample evidence of his belief in the so-called real world. Hewill be wrong, but his evidence is no better or worse thanyour evidence that it rained this morning. Both of you willbe converting evidence of the present into impressionsstored in your minds and you will both be certain your evidenceis solid and irrefutable. Your mind will mold the factsand shape the clues until it all fits.”

“Everything he talked about had a kind of logic to it, but so do many things that are nonsense.”

“(about finding evidence of the past)And when you get that confirmation, it would instantlybecome the past itself. So in effect, you would be using thepast, which does not exist, to confirm something else fromthe past. And if you repeat the process a thousand times,with a thousand different pieces of evidence, together theywould still be nothing but impressions of the past supportingother impressions of the past.”

“the past exists only in yourmind,” he said. “Likewise, the future exists only in yourmind because it has not happened.”

“Your inability to see other possibilities and your lack of vocabularyare your brain’s limits, not the universe’s.”

“Practicality rules our perceptions.To survive, our tiny brains need to tame the blizzard ofdelusion generatorinformation that threatens to overwhelm us. Our perceptionsare wondrously flexible, transforming our worldviewautomatically and continuously until we find safe harbor ina comfortable delusion.”

“Our arrogancecauses us to imagine special value in this temporary collectionof molecules. Why do we perceive more spiritual valuein the sum of our body parts than on any individual cell inour body? Why don’t we hold funerals when skin cells die?”

“There is more information in one thimble of realitythan can be understood by a galaxy of human brains. It isbeyond the human brain to understand the world and itsenvironment, so the brain compensates by creating simplifiedillusions that act as a replacement for understanding.”

“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion thathelps him get through the day”

“it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing.”

“Every generation of humans believed it had all theanswers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumedwould be solved at any moment. And they all believed theirancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the oddsthat you are the first generation of humans who will understandreality?”

“Scientists often invent words to fill the holes in their understanding. These words are meant as conveniences untilreal understanding can be found. Sometimes understanding comes and the temporary words can be replaced with wordsthat have more meaning. More often, however, the patch words will take on a life of their own and no one will remember that they were only intended to be placeholders.”

“How can something that doesn’t exist in physicalform have influence over the things that do?”

“Okay, I can accept the idea that God doesn’t have apersonality exactly like people. Maybe we just assume Godhas a personality because it’s easier to talk about it that way.But the important point is that something had to create reality.It’s too well-designed to be an accident.”

“What does it mean to feel something similar to the wayGod feels? Is that like saying a pebble is similar to the sun because both are round?” he responded.“Maybe God designed our brains to feel love the same way he feels it. He could do that if he wanted to.”

“Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand itas a human?”“Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean,love is love.”“A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part ofthe brain controls the ability to love. If it’s damaged, peopleare incapable of love, incapable of caring about others.”“So?”“So, isn’t it arrogant to think that the love generated byour little brains is the same thing that an omnipotent beingexperiences? If you were omnipotent, why would you limityourself to something that could be reproduced by a littleclump of neurons?”

“How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?”

“Every other question has an answer to why. Onlyprobability is inexplicable.”

“The elderly are spooky when they degenerate intoreflections of their younger selves. They say things thatmake sense on some grammatical level, but it’s not alwaysconnected to reality.”

“I was no longer surprised to find unlocked doorsin the city. Maybe at some subconscious level we don’tbelieve we need protection from our own species.”

“the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is farmore convincing than any complicated explanation couldhope to be.”

“I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.”

“Common sense isn't a real thing. And its ugly cousin, fairness, is a concept invented so dumb people could participate in arguments.”

“You don't have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.”

“Your best work involves timing. If someone wrote the best hip hop song of all time in the Middle Ages, he had bad timing.”

“Free will is an illusion. Humans are nothing but moist robots.”

“Dogbert to Dilbert"My invention can detect human stupidity. It has a very simple interface. All I do is point it at people." "Then what does it do?" "Why would it need to do anything else?”

“Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.”