83 Quotes by Marilyn Savant
- Be able to recognize when you're reading or hearing material biased to your own side.
- Be able to hiccup silently, or at least without alerting neighbors to your situation. The first hiccup is an exception.
- Be able to identify the most common breeds of dogs and cats on sight.
- Be able to keep a secret or promise when you know in your heart that it is the right thing to do.
- Be able to live alone, even if you don't want to and think you will never find it necessary.
- Be able to meet any deadline, even if your work is done less well than it would be if you had all the time you would have preferred.
- Be able to notice all the confusion between fact and opinion that appears in the news.
- Be able to read blueprints, diagrams, floorplans, and other diagrams used in the construction process.
- Be able to recognize the dangerous snakes, spiders, insects, and plants that live in your area of the country.
- Be able to sneeze without sounding ridiculous. That means neither stifling yourself or spraying your immediate vicinity.
- Be able to suffer wearing a necktie or slightly high heels for an entire evening without complaint or early removal.
- Be able to tell whether garments that look good on the hanger actually look good on you.
- Email, instant messaging, and cell phones give us fabulous communication ability, but because we live and work in our own little worlds, that communication is totally disorganized.
- Be able to recognize many of the major constellations and know the stories behind them.
- Know why certain foods, such as truffles, are expensive. It's not because they taste best.
- Know how your representatives stand on major national or state issues.
- Know the difference between principles based on right or wrong vs. principles based on personal gain, and consider the basis of your own principles.
- Know the function of a fuse box and the appearance of a tripped circuit breaker.
- Know the names of past and current artists who are most famous for playing their instruments.
- Know the official post office abbreviations for all 50 states without having to consult a list.
- Know what to do if you feel faint or dizzy, especially if you might fall and hit your head.
- Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Know which officials are voted into office and which are appointed, and by whom.
- Know how to travel from your town to a nearby town without a car, either by bus or by rail.
- Learn at least two classic ballroom dances, at least one of them Latin.
- Make a habit of canceling every subscription to anything you don't have time to read.
- Many people feel they must multi-task because everybody else is multitasking, but this is partly because they are all interrupting each other so much.
- Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.
- No one would choose to be jerked randomly off task again and again until you have half a dozen things you're trying to get done, all at the same time.
- Be able to go shopping for a bathing suit and not become depressed afterward.
- Know where to find the sunrise and sunset times and note how the sky looks at those times, at least once.
- If your head tells you one thing, and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.
- Capital punishment is the source of many an argument, both good and bad.
- Evolution has long been the target of illogical arguments that use presumption.
- Experts say you can't concentrate on more than one task at a time.
- Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering.
- Have you ever noticed that when you must struggle to hear something, you close your eyes?
- I believe that one can indeed work on two or more tasks at once, but in ways yet to be understood.
- I suspect that some apparently homosexual people are really heterosexuals who deeply phobic about the opposite sex or have other emotional problems.
- Know how weather, especially humidity, can affect the movement of doors and windows.
- I would not encourage children or teens to multitask because we don't know where those efforts may lead.
- Know how to treat frostbite until you can get indoors.
- Know about the appeals process, especially in the case of the most serious crimes.
- Know how and how much to tip people who expect gratuities, even in the case of poor service.
- Know how to behave at a buffet. Take a clean plate for a second helping.
- Know how to behave at a fine restaurant, which is a telltale measure of social maturity.
- Know how to drive safely when it's raining or when it's snowing. The two conditions are different.
- Know how to effectively voice a complaint or make a claim at a retail store.
- Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before.
- Be in the habit of getting up bright and early on the weekends. Why waste such precious time in bed?
- I think change is possible, but only for individuals who were never truly gay in the first place and who have a strong personal motivation to recover their heterosexuality.
- Spending waiting moments doing crossword puzzles or reading a book you brought yourself.
- While you're writing, you can't concentrate nearly as well on what the speaker is saying.
- The freedom to be an individual is the essence of America.
- People who work crossword puzzles know that if they stop making progress, they should put the puzzle down for a while.
- The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.
- Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn't. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces.
- What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."
- Be able to draw an illustration as least well enough to get your point across to another person.
- When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations.
- The difference between talking on your cell phone while driving and speaking with a passenger is huge. The person on the other end of the cell phone is chattering away, oblivious.
- Society needs people who can manage projects in addition to handling individual tasks.
- To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
- Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.
- Scientists and creationists are always at odds, of course.
- Play more than one game at a time. This is a painless way to learn how to do many things at once.
- Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.
- Be able to back up a car for a considerable distance in a straight line and back out of a driveway.
- Be able to describe anything visual, such as a street scene, in words that convey your meaning.
- Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.
- Be able to decline a date so gracefully that the person isn't embarrassed that he or she asked.
- Be able to correctly pronounce the words you would like to speak and have excellent spoken grammar.
- Be able to confide your innermost secrets to your mother and your innermost fears to your father.
- Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant.
- Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table.
- Understand why casinos and racetracks stay in business - the gambler always loses over the long term.
- Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.
- Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.
- Attention-deficit disorders seem to abound in modern society, and we don't know the cause.
- Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.
- A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.
- A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.
- Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.
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