Marilyn Vos Savant Quotes

Revenge feels right only to those directly involved. Justice feels right even to outsiders.

Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.

Know the names of past and current artists who are most famous for playing their instruments.

A 45-year old looks a lot like a 25-year old who's been out all night. And feels just as good about having survived the experience.

Try square dancing-at least long enough to no longer feel silly and begin to have fun.

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.

A good leader needs to stand behind his or her followers as often as he or she needs to stand in front of them.

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.

Know about the appeals process, especially in the case of the most serious crimes.

Relatively few of us will find the time-or take it-to live an ever enlarging life.

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.

To acquire knowledge, one must study;
but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

I suspect that some apparently homosexual people are really heterosexuals who deeply phobic about the opposite sex or have other emotional problems.

Geometry is beautifully logical, and it teaches you how to think and prove that things are so, step by step by step. Proofs are excellent lessons in reasoning. Without logic and reasoning, you are dependent on jumping to conclusions or - worse - having empty opinions.

I believe that one can indeed work on two or more tasks at once, but in ways yet to be understood.

Know how to behave at a buffet. Take a clean plate for a second helping.

Be able to recognize when you're reading or hearing material biased to your own side.

An ounce of sequins can be worth a pound of home cooking.

[When asked if the voice is an instrument:] Yes, of course. Some are violins, some are fountain pens and some are stethoscopes. And others are just washboards.

The original answer defines certain conditions, [ ... ] Anything else is a different question.

Know which officials are voted into office and which are appointed, and by whom.

I love having ten times as much stuff to do as I can possibly find time to do. That way, I can pick the one-tenth that I want to do most. But if I only have enough to just occupy all my time, I'm stuck doing all of whatever stuff it happens to be.

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.

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.

Be able to correctly pronounce the words you would like to speak and have excellent spoken grammar.

Be able to draw an illustration as least well enough to get your point across to another person.

Profit is what we have left after we make a donation to a worthwhile cause.

How can we live in freedom and maintain that we are entitled to *anything* that we can't get without the labor of others? Remember, if we are entitled to the labor of others, that makes slaves of those others.

The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.

I've never found an interesting person with a foul mouth.

Be able to tell whether garments that look good on the hanger actually look good on you.

Make a habit of canceling every subscription to anything you don't have time to read.

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.

I believe a 'talented' person is one who has learned how to effectively cultivate and polish any of the many desirable capabilities with which most of us are born but few of us nurture.

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.

The 40s are when you start trading your psychological problems for physical ones.

Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn't. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces.

I believe that love
not imitation
is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated; your lover knows you can't.

Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table.

An error becomes a mistake when we refuse to admit it.

When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations.

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying.

If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another ,before you do anything,you should first decide wether you have a better head or a better heart.

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.

Just because you're unemployed doesn't mean you're not doing anything useful. You are, for example, at least keeping your mother-in-law's wit sharp.

Spending waiting moments doing crossword puzzles or reading a book you brought yourself.

It's a sad day when so many people shirk the most basic responsibilities of life that simply being respectable becomes behavior worthy of special attention. In other words, I think the people you describe are doing what they should. A society has weak values when it regards going to work every day and taking care of your family as heroic.

Loving behavior contributes to the group at the expense of the individual. Competition contributes to the survival of the individual at the expense of the group. In the garden of life, some people are more like flowers, and other people are more like weeds.

An act of justice closes the book on a misdeed; an act of vengeance writes one of its own

A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does.

Evolution has long been the target of illogical arguments that use presumption.

Be able to hiccup silently, or at least without alerting neighbors to your situation. The first hiccup is an exception.

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

Have you ever noticed that when you must struggle to hear something, you close your eyes?

Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before.

I think one of the problems [with raising intelligent children in modern society] is compulsory schooling...and that children are sitting there, and they are taught and told what to believe; they are passive from the very beginning – and one must be very, very aggressive intellectually to have a high IQ [...] the child is taught. Right from the beginning, it's a passive process. He or she sits there, and they simply try to believe everything they're told?

If achieving your potential requires favorable judgment by others, you are much less likely to succeed.

Be sure to expose yourself to criticism: A fine polish requires an abrasive.

Know how to behave at a fine restaurant, which is a telltale measure of social maturity.

Know how to travel from your town to a nearby town without a car, either by bus or by rail.

Common sense comes from experience, and kids need to fail as well as succeed in order to learn it. It's difficult to develop common sense when you spend a lot of time in your room where nothing much happens.

Be able to identify the most common breeds of dogs and cats on sight.

Be able to suffer wearing a necktie or slightly high heels for an entire evening without complaint or early removal.

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.

There are days when I feel I can do anything and days when I feel I can do nothing. But fortunately for those around me, neither sort occurs very often.

Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering.

Learn at least two classic ballroom dances, at least one of them Latin.

Be able to set a table so that you feel like you're dining, not just sitting and eating.

Know the function of a fuse box and the appearance of a tripped circuit breaker.

Be able to go shopping for a bathing suit and not become depressed afterward.

Be able to sneeze without sounding ridiculous. That means neither stifling yourself or spraying your immediate vicinity.

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.

Be able to back up a car for a considerable distance in a straight line and back out of a driveway.

Be able to decline a date so gracefully that the person isn't embarrassed that he or she asked.

Be able to recognize many of the major constellations and know the stories behind them.

Know how to treat frostbite until you can get indoors.

Know the official post office abbreviations for all 50 states without having to consult a list.

Be able to notice all the confusion between fact and opinion that appears in the news.

Know how to effectively voice a complaint or make a claim at a retail store.

Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.

Be able to confide your innermost secrets to your mother and your innermost fears to your father.

Ultimately, our future is like a mirror. Whenever we face it, it always reflects what we left behind.

There's plenty of intelligence in the world, but the courage to do things differently is in short supply.

The freedom to be an individual is the essence of America.

Know how to drive safely when it's raining or when it's snowing. The two conditions are different.