320 pages
Rating: (11.7K votes)
“the confidence people express often reflects their personalities rather than their knowledge, memory, or abilities.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Your moment-to-moment expectations, more than the visual distinctiveness of the object, determine what you see—and what you miss.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Beware of memories accompanied by strong emotions and vivid details—they are just as likely to be wrong as mundane memories, but you’re far less likely to realize it.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Hofstadter’s law tells us: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“the more attention-demanding tasks your brain does, the worse it does each one.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“People are confident that they can drive and talk on the phone simultaneously precisely because they almost never encounter evidence that they cannot.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“confidence and ability can diverge so far that relying on the former becomes a gigantic mental trap,”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“we easily deceive ourselves into thinking that we understand and can explain things that we really know very little about.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“But as you’ll see in this chapter, the confidence that people project, whether they are diagnosing a patient, making decisions about foreign policy, or testifying in court, is all too often an illusion.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Unlike the rankings published for most sports, the chess rating system is extremely accurate; for practical purposes, your rating is a nearly perfect indicator of your ability.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“The human mind’s tendency to promiscuously perceive meaningful visual patterns in randomness has a one-word name: pareidolia.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Both experimental and epidemiological studies show that the driving impairments caused by talking on a cell phone are comparable to the effects of driving while legally intoxicated.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Ellen Goodman wrote, “The very same people who use cell phones … are convinced that they should be taken out of the hands of (other) idiots who use them.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Expertise helps you notice unexpected events, but only when the event happens in the context of your expertise.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Be wary of your intuitions, especially intuitions about how your own mind works.”
― quote from The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
“Goosefeather appeared from the gorse tunnel and padded straight to his den. He didn’t even stop to ask how Leopardfoot was. Bluefur pressed back the urge to rake his muzzle with her claws. He’s supposed to be the Clan medicine cat, for StarClan’s sake!”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Bluestar's Prophecy
“The skies make no special dispensation for Magi, boy, they piss on everyone the same.”
― Joe Abercrombie, quote from Before They Are Hanged
“It is all very simple really. There are no dark problems about it. I have no grudge against society, no bitter hatred of my fellow-men. It just happens that the problems of piracy interest me, suit my particular bent of thought. It is not just a matter of brutality and bloodshed, you know. The organization takes many hours of many days, every detail of a landing has to be thought out, and prepared. I hate disorder, or any slipshod method of attack. The whole thing is very much like a geometrical problem, it is food for the brain. And then—well—then I have my fun, my spice of excitement, my beating of the other fellow. It is very satisfying, very absorbing.”
― Daphne du Maurier, quote from Frenchman's Creek
“Damn it. I don't know how to be a husband, or father. But since your standards in both areas seem to be relatively low, I may have half a chance at pleasing you.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Devil in Winter
“If they were going to be like that, then I just wished they hadn't actually been German. It was too easy. Too obvious. It was like coming across an Irishman who actually was stupid, a mother-in-law who actually was fat, or an American businessman who actually did have a middle initial and smoked a cigar. You feel as if you are unwillingly performing in a music-hall sketch and wishing you could rewrite the script. If Helmut and Kurt had been Brazilian or Chinese or Latvian or anything else at all, they could then have behaved in exactly the same way and it would have been surprising and intriguing and, more to the point from my perspective, much easier to write about. Writers should not be in the business of propping up stereotypes. I wondered what to do about it, decided that they could simply be Latvians if I wanted, and then at last drifted off peacefully to worrying about my boots.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Last Chance to See
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.