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

“That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.”
― Sheldon Vanauken, quote from A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph

“Those of us who hope to be their allies should not be surprised, if and when this day comes, that when those who have been locked up and locked out finally have to chance to speak and truly be heard, what we hear is rage. The rage may frighten us; it may remind us of riots, uprisings and buildings aflame. We may be tempted to control it or douse it with buckets of doubt, dismay or disbelief. But we should do no such thing. Instead, when a young man who was born in the ghetto and who knows little of life beyond the walls of his prison cell and the invisible cage that has become his life, turns to us in bewilderment and rage, we should do nothing more than look him in the eye and tell him the truth.”
― Michelle Alexander, quote from The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

“I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but I do have a choice of how I do it.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down

“Emily peered at him and frowned, then began to dance on the grass. “Okay, Daddy,” Emily said. “When you’re ready to dance with me, this is what you do. First, you put your right hand around my waist like this, then hold your other hand out like this. Then we sway back and forth to the music.” Face animated, she gestured gracefully while talking, lost in the moment”
― Randy Alcorn, quote from Courageous

“Alexander Hamilton Junior High School
-- SEMESTER REPORT --

STUDENT: Joseph Margolis
TEACHER: Janet Hicks

ENGLISH: A, ARITHMETIC: A, SOCIAL STUDIES: A, SCIENCE: A, NEATNESS: A, PUNCTUALITY: A, PARTICIPATION: A, OBEDIENCE: D

Teacher's Comments:
Joseph remains a challenging student. While I appreciate his creativity, I am sure you will agree that a classroom is an inappropriate forum for a reckless imagination. There is not a shred of evidence to support his claim that Dolley Madison was a Lesbian, and even fewer grounds to explain why he even knows what the word means. Similarly, an analysis of the Constitutional Convention does not generate sufficient cause to initiate a two-hour classroom debate on what types of automobiles the Founding Fathers would have driven were they alive today. When asked on a subsequent examination, "What did Benjamin Franklin use to discover electricity?" eleven children responded "A Packard convertible". I trust you see my problem.
[...]
Janet Hicks

Parent's Comments:
As usual I am very proud of Joey's grades. I too was unaware that Dolley Madison was a Lesbian. I assumed they were all Protestants.
Thank you for writing.
Ida Margolis”
― Steve Kluger, quote from Last Days of Summer

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