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.
• Be in the habit of experimenting with your clothing so that you don't get stuck for life with a self-image developed over the course of high school.
• 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 happens when an individual declares bankruptcy and how it affects his or her life.
• 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.
• The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.
• 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.
• At first, I only laughed at myself. Then I noticed that life itself is amusing. I've been in a generally good mood ever since.
• 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.