Fooling Ourselves Quotes

• Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.

  Richard P. Feynman

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• The only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody.

  Booth Tarkington

  Fun, Fool, Pretending

  Newton Booth Tarkington (2015). “Alice Adams”, p.247, Booklassic

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• I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

  Iain Banks

  Thinking, People, May

  Iain Banks (1986). “The bridge”

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• We like to look for patterns and find connections in unrelated events. This way we can explain them to ourselves. Life seems neater, or at least less messy. We need to feel we are in control: it is integral to our self-esteem. We also know, though we deny it, that we are not in control. So we settle for the illusions of control. What if we stopped fooling ourselves?

  Jessica Zafra

  Self Esteem, What If, Patterns

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• I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that regulators are going to be able to outsmart the bankers. So, the task of designing regulatory reform is trying to make more or less foolproof regulation and that's one of the advantages of the systemic category.

  Robert F. Engle

  Thinking, Design, Trying

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history...They all made mistakes. Of course they did. They're human! Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves and each other.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Mistake, Way, Newton

  "What Neil deGrasse Tyson Can Teach You About Mental Health" by Nick Holt, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 6, 2014.

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• If Jesus Christ isn't the central figure in our lives and in our churches, we're only fooling ourselves.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  God, Christian, Religious

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• I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient.

  James Surowiecki

  Thinking, Multitasking, Way

  "Ask the Author Live: James Surowiecki on Procrastination". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. October 1, 2010.

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• It is almost intrinsically impossible for ideas about how we are fooling ourselves to gain an adequate hearing. We are good enough at it to keep them nicely at bay.

  Melvin Konner

  Ideas, Adequate, Hearing

  Melvin Konner (1984). “The tangled wing: biological constraints on the human spirit”

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• When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new.

  Marie Howe

  Writing, Thinking, Discovery

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