Moorie Schwartz Quotes

The word dyting is not synonymous with the word useless ~ Mitch Albom

Watching television is the mental and emotional equivalent of eating junk food. ~ Tony Schwartz

Just leave! you wanted to shout through the screen. Why are you serving him food?? They're just going about their normal routines as if they don't realize they're now goddamn pieces of wood and metal. It makes no sense. Anyway. That's what being depressed is like. For some reason, you've transformed into this inanimate object version of yourself and everyone else seems to be functioning perfectly normally, keeping jobs and falling in love and passing tests and they expect you to do the same. "But I'm a coffee table now!" you want to shout. "There's no way that I, a coffee table, can get out of bed to study for a bio exam. That's not a thing coffee tables are capable of doing! ~ Dana Schwartz

Even this abbreviated rundown of mind-brain philosophies would not be complete without what the Australian philosopher David Chalmers calls "don't-have-clue materialism." This is the default position of those who have no idea about the origins of consciousness or the mind but assert that "it must be physical, as materialism must be true," as Chalmers puts it. "Such a view is held widely, but rarely in print." One might add that many working scientists hold this view without really reflecting on the implications of it. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it ~ Morrie Schwartz.

My father was an entrepreneur - a sign maker, and he had about 20 employees - and often he'd take me to business meetings, and I would listen to him talk with his workers and customers. We would also talk a lot about business over dinner. ~ Bernard L. Schwartz

Talking on a cell phone makes us four times as likely to have an accident - the same as a driver who has a blood alcohol content of .08 percent, which qualifies as intoxicated in most states. The risk is equal for drivers holding their phones to their ears and for those speaking through a hands-free device. In both cases, researchers suggest, the drivers generate mental images of the unseen person at the other end of the line, which conflicts with their capacity for spatial processing. "It's not that your hands aren't on the wheel," says David Strayer, the director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the University of Utah, "it's that your mind is not on the road. ~ Tony Schwartz

Once I got started, I wanted the life of a writer so fiercely that nothing could stop me. I wanted the intensity, the sense of aliveness that came from writing fiction. I'm still that way. My life is worth living when I've completed a good paragraph. ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

In the beginning of life, we need others to survive. At the end of life, we need others to survive. In between, we need others as well. ~ Morrie Schwartz

When you're in bed, you're dead. ~ Morris Schwartz

In a world of scarcity, opportunities don't present themselves in bunches, and the decisions people face are between approach and avoidance, acceptance or rejection. ~ Barry Schwartz

Look at things not as they are, but as they can be. Visualization adds value to everything. A big thinker always visualizes what can be done in the future. He isn't stuck with the present ~ David J. Schwartz

At the moment I'm so exhausted that I feel like cutting my throat, so the next news masy well be that I am across the river and under the trees: what is the meaning and purpose of life? Death. ~ Delmore Schwartz

Acceptance is not a talent you either have or don't have. It's a learned response. My meditation teacher made a great point about the difference between a reaction and a response: You may not have control over your initial reaction to something, but you can decide what your response will be. You don't have to be at the mercy of your emotions, and acceptance can be your first step toward empowerment ... For me, acceptance has been the cornerstone to my having an emotionally healthy response to my illness. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant's brilliant non-fiction about humankind's tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar's Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

For a couple of years at the end of the 1970s, Dustin Hoffman was a fixture in our family. My father was his lawyer and friend. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

Sometimes even paranoids have enemies. ~ Delmore Schwartz

In a world described by quantum physics, an insistence on causal closure of the physical world amounts to a quasi-religious faith in the absolute powers of matter, a belief that is no more than a commitment to brute, and outmoded, materialism. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

All right, Schwartz, tackle my mind now. Go as deep as you want. I was born on Baronn in the Sirius Sector. I lived my life in an atmosphere of anti-Terrestrialism in the formative years, so I can't help what flaws and follies lie at the roots of my subconscious. But look on the surface and tell me if, in my adult years, I have not fought bigotry in myself. Not in others; that would be easy. But in myself, and as hard as I could. ~ Isaac Asimov

We put our values in the wrong things. And it leads to very disillusioned lives. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

We're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

Often we treat certain aspects of ourselves as junk, having no value. We try to throw parts of ourselves in the garbage. But a human being is an ecosystem, and everything in that system is of value to the whole. ~ Stephen Schwartz

Once you learn how to diw, you learn how to live ~ Morrie Schwartz.

We would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of decisions ~ Barry Schwartz

Most people can suppress counterfactual thoughts before they spin too far down a spiral, those who suffer from clinical depression may not be able to. When a student who didn't study much does badly on an exam, he could take responsibility for not having studied more. But the exam could have been easier, or more focused on the material the student knew. ~ Barry Schwartz

Schwartz is an encyclopedia of psychological research on choice problems. If asked to give a quote about him for the back of a book cover, I would say, "This motherfucker knows choice." As ~ Aziz Ansari

It has been my experience that the only person who enjoys a meeting is the person who calls it so they can look important and boss everyone around. ~ Jinx Schwartz

I'm a real food know-it-all. ~ Arthur Schwartz

In the large cities that received new Americans, there flowered a golden age of restaurants, manned by the available talent from abroad and fueled by the restless wealth of the newly rich. ~ David Joseph Schwartz

The best preparation for living fully and well is to be prepared to die at any time, because impending death inspires clarity of purpose, a homing in on what really matters to you. ~ Morrie Schwartz

Yet I have come to distrust book jackets calculated to prick desire like a Bloomingdale's window, as if you could wear what you read. ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Much of what we do arises from automatic programming that bypasses conscious awareness and may even run contrary to our intentions, as Dr. Schwartz points out:
The passive side of mental life, which is generated solely and completely by brain mechanisms, dominates the tone and tenor of our day-to-day, even our second-to-second experience. During the quotidian business of daily life, the brain does indeed operate very much as a machine does.
Decisions that we may believe to be freely made can arise from unconscious emotional drives or subliminal beliefs. They can be dictated by events of which we have no recollection. The stronger a person's automatic brain mechanisms and the weaker the parts of the brain that can impose conscious control, the less true freedom that person will be able to exercise in her life. In OCD, and in many other conditions, no matter how intelligent and well-meaning the individual, the malfunctioning brain circuitry may override rational judgment and intention. Almost any human being when overwhelmed by stress or powerful emotions, will act or react not from intention but from mechanisms that are set off deep in the brain, rather than being generated in the conscious and volitional segments of the cortex. When acting from a driven or triggered state, we are not free. ~ Gabor Mate

Whereas maximizers might do better objectively than satisficers, they tend to do worse subjectively. ~ Barry Schwartz

Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for international terrorist organizations, and abhorrent human rights practices pose one of the greatest threats to global security. ~ Allyson Schwartz

I was coming off of The O.C. and had very little interest in doing another teen drama. And then I got sent theGossip Girl book series, and I was like, 'I might not be ready to leave high school after all.' ~ Josh Schwartz

The sad irony is that the views of the liberty-first advocates are more likely to lead to socialism or totalitarianism than those of the people they criticize for being socialists. ~ Howard I. Schwartz

[To James Laughlin] It was pleasant to learn that you expected our correspondence to be read in the international salons and boudoirs of the future. Do you think they will be able to distinguish between the obfuscations, mystification, efforts at humor, and plain statement of fact? Will they recognize my primary feelings as a correspondent - the catacomb from which I write to you, seeking to secure some word from the real world, or at least news of the Far West - and sigh with compassion? Or will they just think I am nasty, an over-eager clown, gauche, awkward and bookish? Will they understand that I am always direct, open, friendly, simple and candid to the point of naïveté until the ways of the fiendish world infuriate me and I am poked to be devious, suspicious, calculating, not that it does me any good anyway? And for that matter, what will they make of your complex character? ~ Delmore Schwartz

There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
Morrie Schwartz ~ Mitch Albom

There's nothing more fulfilling in therapy than watching two people find each other again. ~ Julie Schwartz Gottman

Elphaba: "I just wish ..."
Fiyero: "What?"
Elphaba: "I wish I could be beautiful ... for you."
Fiyero: "Elphaba ..."
Elphaba: "Don't tell me that I am. You don't need to lie to me."
Fiyero: "It's not lying! It's looking at things another way. ~ Stephen Schwartz

Excuse me, there's no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow. ~ Stephen Schwartz

A demoness is helpless when held by her hair. ~ Howard Schwartz