Kathryn Schulz Quotes

• The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Motivation, Inspiration, Miracle

  "On being wrong". TED conference, www.ted.com. March 2011.

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• The point isn’t to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Regret, Hate

  "Don't regret regret". Ted Talks, www.ted.com. November 2011.

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• To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Journey, Might, Way

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• If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Motivation, Regret, Inspiration

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• And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, “Wow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Space, Steps, Needs

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• We're terrified of not having the answers, and we would sometimes rather assert an incorrect answer than make our peace with the fact that we really don't know.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Answers, Facts, Sometimes

  "Kathryn Schulz On Learning To Love 'Being Wrong'". "Talk of the Nation" with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. June 7, 2010.

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• If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly — it reminds us that we know we can do better.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Dream, Hurt, Regret

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• Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong

  Kathryn Schulz

  Our Love, Understood, Being Wrong

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• Of all the things we are wrong about, error might well top the list ... We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honourable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Mean, Errors, Ideas

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• A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Religious, Memories, Thinking

  "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error". Book by Kathryn Schultz, www.huffingtonpost.com. 2011.

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• We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesen't remind us what we did badly, it reminds us what we know we could do better.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Regret, Past, Imperfect Things

  "33% of Adolescents Regret Their Tattoos, Study Finds" by Derek Beres, bigthink.com. April 11, 2017.

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• without being sure of something, we can not begin to think about everything elses

  Kathryn Schulz

  Thinking, Can Not

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• If it is sweet to be right, then - let's not deny it - it is downright savory to point out that someone else is wrong.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Sweet, Deny, Savory

  Kathryn Schulz (2010). “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error”, p.8, Harper Collins

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• Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that?

  Kathryn Schulz

  Thinking, Errors, Intellectual

  Kathryn Schulz (2010). “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error”, p.21, Harper Collins

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• Unlike earlier thinkers, who had sought to improve their accuracy by getting rid of error, Laplace realized that you should try to get more error: aggregate enough flawed data, and you get a glimpse of the truth. "The genius of statistics, as Laplace defined it, was that it did not ignore errors; it quantified them," the writer Louis Menand observed. "...The right answer is, in a sense, a function of the mistakes.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Mistake, Errors, Data

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• Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly, it reminds us that we know that we could do better.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Letting Go, Regret, Past

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• wrongness always seems to come at us from left field - that is, from outside ourselves. But the reality could hardly be more different. Error is the ultimate inside job. Yes, the world can be profoundly confusing; and yes, other people can mislead or deceive you. In the end, though, nobody but you can choose to believe your own beliefs.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Jobs, Believe, Reality

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• The inability to experience regret is one of the diagnostic characteristics of sociopaths.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Motivation, Regret, Inspiration

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• Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Hard Work, Intelligent, Mind

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• Thirty-three percent of all of our regrets pertain to decisions we made about education.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Motivation, Regret, Inspiration

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• Parading our own brilliance and exulting in other people's errors is not very nice. For that matter, even wanting to parade our own brilliance and exult in other people's errors is not very nice, although it is certainly very human.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Nice, Errors, People

  Kathryn Schulz (2010). “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error”, p.8, Harper Collins

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• both doubt and certainty are as contagious as the common cold

  Kathryn Schulz

  Doubt, Common, Cold

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• doubt is a skill. credulity ,by contrast, appears to be something very like an instinct

  Kathryn Schulz

  Skills, Doubt, Instinct

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• First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?

  Kathryn Schulz

  Philosophy, Mean, Reality

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• Your own regrets may not be as ugly as you think they are.

  Kathryn Schulz

  Regret, Thinking, Ugly

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