Top 149 Quotes & Sayings by Marilyn vos Savant - Page 2

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.

Know how and how much to tip people who expect gratuities, even in the case of poor service.

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

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

Know how your representatives stand on major national or state issues.

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.

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.

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

I would not encourage children or teens to multitask because we don't know where those efforts may lead.

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.

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

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 how to treat frostbite until you can get indoors.

Know what happens when an individual declares bankruptcy and how it affects his or her life.

Know why certain foods, such as truffles, are expensive. It's not because they taste best.

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

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

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

While you're writing, you can't concentrate nearly as well on what the speaker is saying.

Society needs people who can manage projects in addition to handling individual tasks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I think one of the problems [with raising intelligent children] 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.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you: 'Do you want to pick door #2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

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.

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.

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

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

Almost all of the finer things in life are free or nearly free. You don't have to pay for the sky at night or snow in the morning or a kiss on the nose when you're sick. Forgetting that may put you at the mercy of those who seek to profit by convincing you to want whatever it is they have to sell.

Feeling is what you get for thinking the way you do.

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

Stop asking for directions so much. Assuming that you're in a safe environment, pay attention and figure things out for yourself. Have the nerve to take a wrong turn now and then. You'll develop better working instincts and have more self-esteem too.

You're who you think you are, even if you never admit it to yourself or to anyone else. You may be in the worst position to judge, but you're in the best position to know.

One of the few articles of clothing that a man won't try to remove from a woman is an apron.

When you're in a good mood, bring up the past. When you're in a bad mood, stick to the present. And when you're not feeling emotional at all, it's time to talk about the future.

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

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

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

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.

I believe that one becomes stronger emotionally by taking life less personally. If your employer criticizes your report, don't take it personally. Instead, find out what's needed and fix it. If your girlfriend laughs at your tie, don't take it personally. Find another tie or find another girlfriend.

What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."

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

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

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

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

You can't be wise without being intelligent, but you certainly can be intelligent without being wise.

Success may be the ability to be happy with whatever we're stuck with.

The squeaky wheel may get the most oil, but it's also the first to be replaced.

The lower our self-esteem, the more we're attracted to our opposite, and the higher our self-esteem, the more we are attracted to another like ourselves.

It is a lot easier to prove that you don't love someone than it is to prove that you do, but one of the best 'proofs' I know is the desire to devote time to the person with no expectation of any sort of compensation, including gratitude, in return.

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.

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.

If you never heard opportunity knock, maybe you're never at home.