Ken Jennings Quotes

I would read the atlas for pleasure. I knew it was weird. It was weird.

I feel about Flannery O'Connor the same way that terrible people feel about Ayn Rand.

If youre a vegan who ran a marathon & got your dogs from a shelter, how do you decide which thing to wedge into the conversation first?

The great thing about knowing stuff is that anyone can do it.

It's so much fun that the money is just icing on the cake. There seems to be a lot of icing.

Getting your ego out of the way has an even deeper organizational impact.

The key is selecting the right people to join the team, those with the right skills and values, those who embrace our purpose.

I have always loved maps.

Being a nerd really pays off sometimes.

We regret the insinuation that Mr. Alex Trebek is a robot, and has been since 2004. Mr. Trebek's robotic frame does still contain some organic parts, many harvested from patriotic Canadian schoolchildren, so this technically makes him a 'cyborg,' not a 'robot.'

When you see people who are really good at game shows, the one common attribute is a cool head under pressure: an ability to perform as well in the studio, surrounded by lights and noise, as you do on your couch.

There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won't let us look anywhere else in the room if there's a map on the wall.

Many cases of twentieth-century American map geekdom, it seems, began the same way that many twentieth-century Americans began: conceived in the backseats of Buicks

The thing you like/are good at is a sacred thing ...

Eratosthenes, the mapmaker who was the first man to accurately measure the size of the Earth, was a librarian.

Trivia is mainstream. 'Nerd' is the new 'cool.

Sure I have a cell-phone, so I don't have to remember everyone's number anymore, but that really wasn't a core part of my brain.

By putting others first the Serving Leader is able to catalyze the creation of high- performance teams.

For some reason the most devoted mapheads seem to be kids.

For me, it started as a child with one of those little wooden jigsaw maps of the U.S., where's there's crocodiles on Florida and apples on Washington state. That was my very first map.

It's boring to have the same guy win. I'm actively rooting against myself.

The real cocktail party conversation would probably go something like this:
"Actually, I have a degree in geography."
"Geography? Wow, I'm terrible with maps. I bet YOU know all your state capitals, though!"
(Geographer's smile freezes, left eye starts to twitch uncontrollably.)

Arthur Jay Klinghoffer, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, has argued that geography seems less relevant than ever in a world where nonstate actors
malleable entities like ethnicities, for example
are as powerful and important as the ones with governments and borders. Where on a map can you point to al-Qaeda? Or Google, or Wal-Mart? Everywhere and nowhere.

I remember one of my last shows, the Final Jeopardy! clue was something like 'These two boys' names are top 10 boys' names in the U.S., they both end with the same letter, and they're both names of Jesus' apostles.' Now, obviously that's not a knowable fact.

To serve the many, you first serve the few.

The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies.
"Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth."
"Right, like geologists."
"Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle..."
"So, it's like oceanography or hydrology."
"And the atmosphere."
"Meteorology, climatology..."
"It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet."
"How is that different from ecology or environmental science?"
"Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--"
"Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci."
"Some geographers specialize in different world regions."
"Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department."
"They're not."
(Long pause.)
"So, uh, what is it that do study then?

Twitter makes you a comedian in the same way that digital cameras make you a photographer

You watch an old 'Jeopardy!' and the categories alone are very plain. 'Poetry,' or 'Movies,' or 'Physics.' If you watch it now, though, there'll be a theme board where the categories are all Hitchcock movies. Lots more jokes, lots more high-concept categories and questions.

pg. 245 ...there probably isn't a marriage or a relationship or a friendship anywhere today that wasn't jump-started by trivia.

There's just something hypnotic about maps.

When a leader keeps personal ego in check it builds the confidence and self-esteem of others.

We don't realize how hard it was to drive anywhere outside the major cities less than a century ago.

I would stare at maps of Delaware for hours.

I pick up Dylan. He certainly takes after his father: about three-quarters of his body weight seems to be head, and three-quarters of that is ears.

The theory of servant leadership is vital, but it's the active Serving Leader that makes the critical difference.

pg. 58. As a kid, I always assumed the know-it-alls on Jeopardy! were obviously the smartest people in America. If you were smart, that's how you showed it: by knowing all your state flowers and kings of Saxony. But what if Rob's right and that's a different, much shallower kind of intelligence? Is my mountain of flash cards all for naught?

As Jeopardy devotees know, if you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all. On any given night, nearly all the contestants know nearly all the answers, so it's just a matter of who masters buzzer rhythm the best.

Knowing lots of answers but being a millisecond slow on the buzzer is indeed very frustrating.

If you never open a map until you're lost, you're missing out on all the fun.

If I start outsourcing all my navigation to a little talking box in my car, I'm sort of screwed. I'm going to lose my car in the parking lot every single time.

Serving Leaders direct credit to others.

(Trunk-or-treating, for those who don't know, is just like trick-or-treating, except with cars instead of houses, lame decorations instead of awesome ones, and no fun instead of fun.)

So maybe we never would have realized we were so compatible if we hadn't been trading song lyrics and movie dialogue. That's textbook trivia right there."
Mindy looks unconvinced. "But that's how *everybody* gets together. They find some dumb thing they both know a little about that they can talk about until the waiter brings dinner. According to you, there probably isn't a marriage or a relationship or a friendship anywhere today that wasn't jump-started by trivia."
"I think that's exactly right," I agree. "To trivia.

The leader turns the pyramid onto its head in order to serve others.

I always feel a certain sense of reverence in libraries, even small city ones that smell like homeless internet users.

What are those bulb things you're slicing?"
"You've never seen fennel? It looks like celery and tastes like licorice.