Michael Shermer Quotes

Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

Michael Shermer

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Quotes to Explore

• There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

  

  C. S. Lewis
  • Marriage
  • Hidden
  • Sword

• We all have our strengths and our failings.

  

  Hannah Simone
  • Our
  • Strengths
  • Failings

• My dad was in the military, yeah. He was in the Air Force, and he was a doctor, so he would go places for six months here, and two years there. And I was home-schooled because I played the violin, and I did a lot of competitions.

  

  Felicia Day
  • Home
  • Dad
  • Air

• I shall always be a priest of love.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Love
  • Always
  • Priest

• A novel is a great act of passion and intellect, carpentry and largess. From the very beginning, I wrote to explain my own life to myself, and I invited readers who chose to make the journey with me to join me on the high wire.

  

  Pat Conroy
  • Life
  • Great
  • High

• War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

  

  Nawal El Saadawi
  • War
  • Courage
  • Israel

• I think management and technology all come into play in building a super-yacht. It is a challenge - a serious challenge.

  

  Gautam Singhania
  • Technology
  • Challenge
  • Serious

• When you start to see another human being as less than you, it's a danger.

  

  Immaculee Ilibagiza
  • Human
  • Start
  • Danger

• Sometimes the storyline is as simple as, 'We're just going to be the best, and we're going for the championships.

  

  Becky Lynch
  • Simple
  • Best
  • Sometimes

• Young people who are just starting out somehow need to let you know they know how to sing.

  

  Barbara Cook
  • People
  • Know
  • Starting

• You always learn something from mistakes.

  

  Yani Tseng
  • You
  • Learn
  • Mistakes

• I go to correctional facilities and talk to kids there. They have little kids in there who are, like, 12 years old, stealing cars and stuff like that.

  

  Eric Lynn Wright
  • Kids
  • Old
  • Talk

• I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.

  

  Carl Hiaasen
  • Writing
  • Home
  • Wife

• We must believe in free will, we have no choice.

  

  Isaac Bashevis Singer
  • Believe
  • Free
  • Choice

• I suppose people hadn't really thought each decade should have its own character and be different from the others till the 1920s, although I remember in a nineteenth-century Russian novel someone remarked that a character was a typical man of the 1830s - progressive and an atheist.

  

  Edmund White
  • People
  • Different
  • Character

• I am very shy with people I don't know.

  

  Ingmar Bergman
  • Shy

• But the worst of all is, according to the old phrase, while the grass grows, the horse starves, but the man of money is the man for Nova Scotia. Those may do extremely well.

  

  Nathaniel Smith
  • Money
  • May
  • Man

• There is no health without mental health; mental health is too important to be left to the professionals alone, and mental health is everyone's business.

  

  Vikram Patel
  • Important
  • Business
  • Alone

• When people left on the Oregon Trail from St. Louis, they knew that only a fraction of them would make it to the West Coast. But they went anyway.

  

  John M. Grunsfeld
  • People

• Basins of attraction, of self organization, show up as well in our complex social environment, in human organizations. Here again, while we cannot predict the result of any given input, we can say that it will likely fall within one of several areas.

  

  Kevin Kelly
  • Up
  • Fall
  • Environment

• As a child, all I knew was that people kept asking me to sing, and because I liked to please, I would sing. It wasn't until my dad told me that my singing made him happy that I began to think my voice might be good.

  

  Johnny Mathis
  • People
  • Good
  • Happy

• When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Different
  • Looks

• Kids love me. I can bounce back and forth. I can discipline kids, and I can get into the mind of a kid. In my brain, I consider myself the ultimate video game player. The ultimate snack maker.

  

  J. B. Smoove
  • Mind
  • Kids
  • Game

• Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.

  

  Michael Shermer
  • People
  • Believe
  • Reason