Schwartz Quotes

The press always ends up being much nicer than I expect. A lot of times they say something snarky about you, but then you meet them in person and they couldn't be nicer. ~ Josh Schwartz

He (Rene Descartes) posited the existence of two parallel yet separate domains of reality: res cogitans, the thinking substance of the subjective mind whose essence is thought, and res extensa, or the extended substance of the material world. Mental stuff and material (including brain) stuff are absolutely distinct, he argued. ~ Jeffrey M. 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

Dancing through life Swaying and sweeping And always keeping cool Life is faught less When you're thoughtless Those who don't try Never look foolish Dancing through life Mindless and careless Make sure you're where less Trouble is rife Woes are fleeting Blows are glancing When you're dancing Through life ... ~ Stephen Schwartz

Like they said about The West Wing, you can't do a show about Washington until you can. ~ Josh Schwartz

Many are the things I guess we'd like to go back in time and rectify the things we didn't do right, eh? ~ Julius Schwartz

The lives we lead, every decision, it shows on our faces. ~ Jenny Schwartz

The difference between great actors and the rest of us isn't simply that they know how to make more out of less, but that, like lions at the watering hole, they will always take more than their share from the pool of available resources - extra air from the room, added knowledge from our faces. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

The trap is that you then just start doing stuff about Hollywood, which I don't really want to do. ~ Josh 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

At This Moment Of Time

Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear
The Ace of Spades. They fear
Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,
Sweet with decision. And they distrust
The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,
Then the colored lights, rising.
Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume
Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,
Locked in the stone of his act and office.
While the brass band brightly bursts over the water
They stand in the crowd lining the shore
Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it. Their eyes
Are haunted by water

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true
That "no man is happy," but that is not
The sense which guides you. If we are
Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),
You are exact. You tug my sleeve
Before I speak, with a shadow's friendship,
And I remember that we who move
Are moved by clouds that darken midnight ~ Delmore Schwartz

I believe if I refuse to grow old, I can stay young 'til I die. ~ Stephen Schwartz

Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not superhuman. Success does not require a super-intellect. Nor is there anything mystical about success. And success isn't based on luck. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never ... yes, never ... sell yourself short. ~ David J. Schwartz

I really was interested in doing something for a premium channel like Showtime or HBO, just because you get to really let loose. I think they let their storylines go wherever they want, and it's really a special place to work. ~ Ben Schwartz

A lot of what I do is running businesses rather than buying stocks. My worst decision is probably when I know I have the wrong chief executive running the business, and I keep on waiting to make the difficult decision of replacing him. ~ Gerry 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

Be an experimental person. Break up fixed routines. Expose yourself to new restaurants, new books, new theaters, new friends; take a different route to work someday, take a different vacation this year, do something new and different this weekend. ~ David J. Schwartz

If we can remember the feeling of love we once had, we can die without ever going away. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. "My God, this is terrible," the wave says. "Look what's going to happen to me!"
Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, "Why do you look so sad?"
The first wave says, "You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?"
The second wave says, "No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

You buy a pair of shoes that turn out to be uncomfortable. Thaler suggests the expensive they were, the more often you'll try to wear them. Eventually you'll stop wearing them, but you won't get rid of them. And the more you paid for them the longer they will sit in your closet. At some point, after the shoes have been fully depreciated psychologically, you will throw them away. ~ Barry Schwartz

It is my goal to learn as much about the people I'm surrounded by. I am slowly widening who I am close with, and at the same time, growing further away from others. ~ Josh Schwartz

In particular, if consciousness is an ontological fundamental-that is, a primary element of reality-then it may have the power to achieve what is both the best-documented and at the same time the spookiest effect of the m ind on the material world: the ability of consciousness to transform the infinite possibilities for, say, the position of a subatomic particle as described by quantum mechanics into the single reality for that position as detected by an observer. If that sounds both mysterious and spooky, it is a spookiness that has been a part of science since almost the beginning of the twentieth century. It was physics that first felt the breath of this ghost, with the discoveries of quantum mechanics, and it is in the field of neuroscience and the problem of mind and matter that its ethereal presence is felt most markedly today. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

It's so fun to play a character that has so many layers that people won't even know, until the next season. ~ Ben Schwartz

The Diet Mentality has come about because there is agreement in our society that the only way to lose weight is by dieting. But dieting produces absolutely no permanent, positive results. In fact, it makes you feel worse about yourself and probably does more damage than good to your health. ~ Bob Schwartz

Life is too short to waste. Dreams are fulfilled only through action, not through endless planning to take action. ~ David J. Schwartz

Persons who reach the higher rungs in business management, selling, engineering, religious work, writing, acting & in every other pursuit get there by following conscientiously & continuously a plan for self-development & growth. ~ David J. Schwartz

Most people give substantial weight to anecdotal evidence, perhaps so much that it will cancel out positive recommendations found in consumer reports. People's tendency to give undue weight to some types of information is called the availability heuristic. A heuristic is a rule of thumb, a mental shortcut. Suppose someone asked you a question like what's more common in English, words that start with the letter to r words that have t as the third letter. You would have an easier time generating words that started with the letter t. Words starting with t would be more 'available'. ~ Barry Schwartz

Holidays in general breed unrealistic expectations. The minute you start wondering, 'is it going to be wonderful enough?,' it never will be. ~ Pepper Schwartz

Money seeds, of course, grow money. Plant service and harvest money. ~ David J. Schwartz

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

There's no backward and no forward, no day other than this. You fill your cart as you go, and that's that. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

All right, that was my moment with loneliness. I'm not afraid of feeling lonely, but now I'm going to put that loneliness aside and know that there are other emotions in the world, and I'm going to experience them as well. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home. ~ Delmore Schwartz

Gawande reports that research has shown that patients commonly prefer to have others make their decisions for them. Though as many as 65 percent of people surveyed say that if they were to get cancer, they would want to choose their own treatment, in fact, among people who do get ~ Barry Schwartz

What we do in our lives is what gives us contentment and serenity and makes us feel like we are doing some kind of contribution. ~ Stephen Schwartz

People don't read bylines. ~ Julius 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

By almost every account he's a fine young man. I'm simply trying to figure out why I should care that he's three centimeters taller than he was in May. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

information costs," is not the way to maximize one's investment. The true maximizer would determine just how much information seeking was the amount needed to lead to a very good decision. ~ Barry Schwartz

Lane writes that we are paying for increased affluence and increased freedom with a substantial decrease in the quality and quantity of social relations. ~ Barry Schwartz

The brain, to be sure, is indeed the physical embodiment of the mind, the organ through which the mind finds expression and through which it acts in the world. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

I am of Russian-Jewish distraction. ~ Delmore Schwartz

The total average cost of driving, including depreciation, maintenance, and insurance, runs about 61 cents a mile, and since the average automobile used for commuting to work contains only 1.1 people, every commute costs a little more than 55 cents per passenger mile. This means that, if you're an automobile commuter traveling twenty-five miles each way to work, you're spending around $30 a day for the privilege, not including the cost, if there is one, to park. You're also spending an hour every day for which, unless you're a cabbie or bus driver yourself, you're not getting paid, and during which you're not doing anything productive at all. For the average American, that's another $24. In transportation, time really is money. ~ Samuel I. Schwartz

The enduring responsibility of the United States Air Force is to provide strategic deterrence for the Nation and fly, fight and win as an integral part of the Joint Team. Together with our brothers and sisters in arms, we underwrite the national strategy of defending the Homeland and assuring allies, while dissuading, deterring and defeating enemies. ~ Norton A. 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

have the courage to face your faults. ~ David J. Schwartz

Eight hours of sleep would be amazing. That would be the best. If I could just figure out that part of my life, it would be great. ~ Ben Schwartz

To these three comparisons I have added a fourth: the gap between what one has and what one expects. ~ Barry Schwartz

You can find joy in practically any situation if you are open to the experience of happiness. ~ Morrie Schwartz

Of course, bankers were always interested in making money. But when bankers had clients, they bore some responsibility for the clients' welfare. ~ Barry Schwartz

Let's begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security.16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for what they are and value our true emotions and needs. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Most good decisions will involve these steps: Figure out your goal or goals. Evaluate the importance of each goal. Array the options. Evaluate how likely each of the options is to meet your goals. Pick the winning option. Later use the consequences of your choice to modify your goals, the importance you assign them, and the way you evaluate future possibilities. ~ Barry Schwartz

the big things that make a good speaker: knowledge of what he's going to talk about and an intense desire to tell it to other people. ~ David J. Schwartz

So the researchers concluded that being forced to confront trade-offs in making decisions makes people unhappy and indecisive. ~ Barry Schwartz

Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again. ~ Morrie Schwartz.

If I play a video game, I have to get through the whole thing. Like, when the new 'Resident Evil' comes out, I have to sit and do the whole thing. It will consume my life. I'm at a point where I don't have much time to play around anymore, so I don't really get started on the games if I won't be able to finish them. ~ Ben Schwartz

PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, a school greatly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, holds that mind and brain are manifestations of a single reality, one that is in constant flux. It thus is compatible with classical Buddhist philosophy, which views clear and penetrating awareness of change and impermanence (anicca in Pali) as the essence of insight. Thus, as Whitehead put it, "The reality is the process," and it is a process made up of vital transient "drops of experience, complex, and interdependent." This view is strikingly consistent with recent developments in quantum physics. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The United States must also continue to push the United Nations Security Council for strong action to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. In the meantime, it is our job to take meaningful steps to eliminate the threats posed by Iran. ~ Allyson Schwartz

The situation in the West Bank and Gaza involves a military occupation amid urban guerrilla warfare, analogous to the British security measures in Northern Island, that hopefully will end with a cease-fire. ~ Jack Schwartz

Complaining about the weather makes you more miserable and it spreads misery to others. ~ David J. Schwartz

You are what you think. Think enthusiasm and you'll be enthusiastic. To get high-quality work, be enthusiastic about the job you want done. Others will catch the enthusiasm you generate and you'll get first-class performance. ~ David J. Schwartz

biodiversity actually begins in the soil. ~ Judith D. Schwartz

Just sit right back
And you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailin' lad,
The Skipper brave and sure,
Five passengers set sail that day,
For a three hour tour,
A three hour tour.


The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost.
The Minnow would be lost.

The ship set ground on the shore
Of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan,
The Skipper too.
The millionaire
And his wife,
The movie star,
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.



So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.

The first mate and his Skipper too
Will do their very best,
To make the others comf'terble
In their tropic island nest.

No phone, no lights, no motor car,
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Crusoe
It's primitive as can be.

So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to get a smile,
From seven stranded castaways
Here on Gilligan's Isle! ~ Sherwood Schwartz

How did she do it, I'd always wondered. Dancing with Q., I understood. Once in a while the pain falls asleep on the job, and the experienced sufferer knows enough to seize such moments swiftly and without thought - for when we realize we're actually dancing, the jolt of joy wakens the pain.
Laura Acosta ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

But Mr. Success reacted differently when he got knocked down. He bounced up, learned a lesson, forgot the beating, and moved upward. ~ David J. 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

In the best of all possible worlds, February 14 is a pleasant and sentimental opportunity to lavish your partner with attention or move your relationship to the next level. ~ Pepper Schwartz

The evidence of a Jewish civilization going back more than two millennia is overwhelmingly borne out in the archaeology of the region. The heritage of the Jews in Palestine is documented. ~ Jack Schwartz

Build castles, don't dig graves. ~ David J. Schwartz

Maybe death is the great equalizer, the one big thing that can finally make strangers shed a tear for one another ~ Morrie Schwartz.

I have said many times that it's a mistake to bet against the long-term health of the U.S. equity markets because it's a mistake to bet against the long-term health of the U.S. economy. ~ Gerry Schwartz

I own all the characters I created, thanks to the Writers Guild, so nobody can do anything without me. The way it works is: If the copyright owners instigate a project, like the movie, then I get a fee as creator. If I instigate a project, like the musical, I pay a percentage to the copyright owners. ~ Sherwood Schwartz

Only here, long after midnight, while everyone else was sleeping, when nothing was expected of him, could Schwartz convince himself that he was working hard enough. These hours felt stolen, added to his life. The voice fell quiet. ~ Chad Harbach

We can't all come and go by Bubble! ~ Stephen Schwartz

Believing there is a solution paves the way to a solution. ~ David J. Schwartz

Without hope, the need to punish is the one true religion. Blame must be fixed on some soul other than one's own. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

Just because you really like something, doesn't mean you can do it. ~ Tina P. Schwartz

WHERE THERE IS A WILL, THERE IS A WAY ~ David J. 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

When Arab apologists wring their hands over an Israeli military incursion, they never mention what the Israelis are reacting to, or else diminish and distort it. ~ Jack Schwartz

Belief, strong belief, triggers the mind to figure ways and means and how-to. ~ David J. Schwartz

I don't remember what I did fifty years ago. ~ Julius Schwartz

In hundreds of interviews with people at all levels I've made this discovery: The bigger the person, the more apt he is to encourage you to talk; the smaller the person, the more apt he is to preach to you. ~ David J. 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

Yet, only years after the Nazi-era, millions were sent to their deaths in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the world once again took too long to act. ~ Allyson Schwartz

The anxiety of not knowing what my next gig is keeps me hungry. ~ Ben Schwartz

It would be hard to ignore the absence of democracy in any Arab nation. ~ Jack Schwartz

My dear Mr. Schwartz, you appeared in the nick of time. It might have been a drama on the stage! I am very much in your debt. ~ Agatha Christie

The culture doesn't encourage you to think about such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with egostical things, career, family, having enough money, meeting the mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks. We're involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going . So we don't get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing? ~ Morrie Schwartz.

The thinking that guides your intelligence is much more important than how much intelligence you have ~ David J. Schwartz

Leave the dishes unwashed and the demands on your time unanswered. Be ruthless and refuse to do what people ask of you. ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Ideas are fruits of your thinking. But they've got to be harnessed and put to work to have value.
Each year an oak tree produces enough acorns to populate a good-size forest. Yet from these bushels of seeds perhaps only one or two acorns will become a tree. The Squirrels destroy most of them, and the hard ground beneath the tree doesn't give the few remaining seeds much chance for a start. So it is with ideas. Very few bear fruit. Ideas are highly perishable. If we're not on guard, the squirrels (negative-thinking people) will destroy most of them. Ideas require special handling from the time they are born until they're transformed into practical ways for doing things better. ~ David J. Schwartz

Investments are like trains, and if you miss one, don't worry because another one will come down the line. ~ Gerry Schwartz

When I became a winner, I said, 'I figured it out, but if I'm wrong, I'm getting the hell out, because I want to save my money and go on to the next trade.' ~ Martin S. Schwartz

But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric - not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see? ~ Chad Harbach

Practical wisdom," Aristotle told us, "is the combination of moral will and moral skill. ~ Barry Schwartz

The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I've come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity, without the drawback of being dead. ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

We can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.
These seem like contradictory principles, but they are not. Free will can take us far, suggests Dr. Schwartz's research, but it cannot carry us infinitely beyond our genetic limits. Bill Gates is never going to be Bill Clinton, no matter how he polishes his social skills, and Bill Clinton can never be Bill Gates, no matter how much time he spends alone with a computer.
We might call this the "rubber band theory" of personality. We are like rubber bands at rest. We are elastic and can stretch ourselves, but only so much. ~ Susan Cain

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

THE FOUR STEPS Step 1: Relabel - Identify your deceptive brain messages and the uncomfortable sensations; call them what they really are. Step 2: Reframe - Change your perception of the importance of the deceptive brain messages; say why these thoughts, urges, and impulses keep bothering you: They are false brain messages (It's not ME, it's just my BRAIN!). Step 3: Refocus - Direct your attention toward an activity or mental process that is wholesome and productive - even while the false and deceptive urges, thoughts, impulses, and sensations are still present and bothering you. Step 4: Revalue - Clearly see the thoughts, urges, and impulses for what they are, simply sensations caused by deceptive brain messages that are not true and that have little to no value (they are something to dismiss, not focus on). ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz