Quotes from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don’t mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“You can change only what people know, not what they do.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to trurh.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it
means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re
doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt
from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the
world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes.
The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our
brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable
to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe
we have no idea how to behave.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that
helps him get through the day”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“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.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“The ability to work hard and make sacrifices comes naturally to those who know exactly what they want.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Your inability to see other possibilities and your lack of vocabulary
are your brain’s limits, not the universe’s.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Awareness is about unlearning. It is the recognition
that you don’t know as much as you thought you knew.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary?”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“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.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Every generation of humans believed it had all the
answers it needed, except for a few mysteries they assumed
would be solved at any moment. And they all believed their
ancestors were simplistic and deluded. What are the odds
that you are the first generation of humans who will understand
reality?”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Scientists often invent words to fill the holes in their understanding. These words are meant as conveniences until
real understanding can be found. Sometimes understanding comes and the temporary words can be replaced with words
that 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.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“It is a human tendency to
become what you attack.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Clinical psychologists have proven that ordinary people
will alter their memories of the past to make them fit
their perceptions. It is the way all normal brains function
under ordinary circumstances.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Everything that motivates living creatures is based on
some weakness or flaw. Hunger motivates animals. Lust
motivates animals. Fear and pain motivate animals. A God
would have none of those impulses. Humans are driven by
all of our animal passions plus loftier-sounding things like
self-actualization and creativity and freedom and love”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Because everything you perceive is a metaphor for
something your brain is not equipped to fully understand.
God is as real as the clothes you are wearing and the chair
you are sitting in. They are all metaphors for something you
will never understand.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“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.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“the past exists only in your
mind,” he said. “Likewise, the future exists only in your
mind because it has not happened.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Everything he talked about had a kind of logic to it, but so do many things that are nonsense.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It is
also a way of signaling the importance of another person by
showing your willingness to give that person your rarest
resource: time. It is a way of conveying respect. Conversation
reminds us that we are part of a greater whole, connected in
some way that transcends duty or bloodline or commerce.
Conversation can be many things, but it can never be useless.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“There is more information in one thimble of reality
than can be understood by a galaxy of human brains. It is
beyond the human brain to understand the world and its
environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified
illusions that act as a replacement for understanding.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Your brain can only process a tiny portion of your environment,
It risks being overwhelmed by the volume
of information that bombards you every waking moment.
Your brain compensates by filtering out the 99.9 percent of
your environment that doesn’t matter to you.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“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 a
delusion that their personal viewpoints are universal. That viewpoint—that each gender is a defective version of the
other—is the root of all misunderstandings.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Skeptics,” he said, “suffer from the skeptics’ disease—
the problem of being right too often.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“If you are proven to be right a hundred times in a row,
no amount of evidence will convince you that you are mistaken
in the hundred-and-first case. You will be seduced by
your own apparent infallibility. Remember that all scientific
experiments are performed by human beings and the results
are subject to human interpretation. The human mind is a
delusion generator, not a window to truth. Everyone, including
skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views.
That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are
not exempt from self-delusion.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“But never being wrong is no proof that
the method of testing is sound for all cases”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“the simplest explanation usually sounds right and is far
more convincing than any complicated explanation could
hope to be.”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

“Our arrogance
causes us to imagine special value in this temporary collection
of molecules. Why do we perceive more spiritual value
in the sum of our body parts than on any individual cell in
our body? Why don’t we hold funerals when skin cells die?”
― Scott Adams, quote from God's Debris: A Thought Experiment

About the author

Popular quotes

“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend. The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body.

I want to know where to touch you, I want to know how to touch you. I want to know convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unravel Me

“That's all I can do. I'll keep at it and hope it gets better.”
― Ned Vizzini, quote from It's Kind of a Funny Story

“But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.”
― Lisa Genova, quote from Still Alice

“Las cosas se duplican en Tlön; propenden asimismo a borrarse ya perder los detalles cuando los olvida la gente. Es clásico el ejemplo de un umbral que perduró mientras lo visitaba un mendigo y que se perdió de vista a su muerte. A veces unos pájaros, un caballo han salvado las ruinas de un anfiteatro.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Ficciones

“Women, however charming, have this disadvantage: they distract the mind from food!”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Death on the Nile

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.