Great Throughts Treasury

"If an economist uses a complicated model to predict just about anything, you can ignore it. By analogy, a doctor can't tell you the exact date of your death in 50 years. But if a doctor tells you to eat less and exercise more, that's good advice even if you later get hit by a bus. Along those same lines, economists can give useful general advice on the economy, even if you know there will be surprises. Still, be skeptical."

"If hypnosis worked, wouldn't all the leaders be hypnotists? What if they are?"

"If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a fool about it."

"If I liked food and disliked exercise as much as a 400 pound guy, I'd be a 400 pound guy."

"If the soul`s actions are not controlled by rules, that can only mean the soul acts randomly. On the other hand, where is free will located? If your soul is guided by rules, which in turn guide you, then you have no free will. You are programmed. There is no in between; your life is either random or predetermined."

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?"

"If our mushrooms make you hallucinate, please inform us immediately so we can overcharge you."

"If you are proven to be right a hundred times in a row, no amount of evidence will convince you that you are mistaken in the hundred-and-first case. You will be seduced by your own apparent infallibility. Remember that all scientific experiments are performed by human beings and the results are subject to human interpretation. The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth. Everyone, including skeptics, will generate delusions that match their views. That is how a normal and healthy brain works. Skeptics are not exempt from self-delusion."

"If you can imagine the future being brighter, it lifts your energy and gooses the chemistry in your body that produces a sensation of happiness. If you can?t even imagine an improved future, you won?t be happy no matter how well your life is going right now."

"If you can deliver an image of decisiveness, no matter how disingenuous, others will see it as leadership."

"If there is one thing that our role models in this election have taught us, it's that omitting important information is completely different from lying."

"If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can't control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game. If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall."

"If you don?t believe your salmon is wild, ask it to fetch your newspaper and see what happens."

"If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done."

"If you give an ant infinite time, it can move a mountain all by itself."

"If you read it for a while, you feel like you know the guy behind it, and that makes it funnier for me. The characters are unbelievably well-defined. I've often made the case that if you can't describe the character in one or two words, then its not going to work. And he does that."

"If you have questions about this salad, give your server the spinach inquisition."

"If you see something that impresses you, a decent respect to humanity insists you voice your praise."

"If you spend all your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts."

"If you want to understand UFOs, reincarnation and God, do not study UFOs, reincarnation and God. Study people."

"If you work in the city long enough, it begins to deal with you on a personal level. Streets reveal their moods. Sometimes the signal light loves you. Sometimes they fight you. When you're hunting for a new building, you hope the city is on your side. You have to use a little bit of thinking--you might call it the process of elimination--and you need a little bit of instinct, but not too much of either. If you think too hard, you overshoot your target and end up at the Pier or the Tenderloin. If you relax and let the city help, the destination does all the work for you."

"If you?re going to create, create a lot. Creativity is not like playing the slot machines, where failure to win means you go home broke. With creativity, if you don?t win, you?re usually no worse off than if you hadn?t played."

"If, as you say, our minds are delusion generators, then we?re all like blind and deaf sea captains shouting orders into the universe and hoping it makes a difference. We have no way of knowing what really works and what merely seems to work. So doesn?t it make sense to try all the things that appear to work even if we can?t be sure?"

"If you think it?s easy to write jokes about fried calamari, you?ve probably never tried."

"If you think your odds of solving your problem are bad, don?t rule out the possibility that what is really happening is that you are bad at estimating odds."

"If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power."

"If you think about it, human beings are the worst possible creatures to have access to powerful technology. It would be much better for everyone if, for example, fish were the ones with all the technology. They wouldn't be able to push the buttons with their little fins. No humans would get hurt, and the fish would be able to brag about their great stuff until eventually it all turned into protective barrier reefs."

"If you want to kill an idea without being identified as the assassin, suggest that the legal department take a look at it."

"If you want to be safe from weasels, you need to think like a weasel. I recommend maintaining a constant level of mistrust and cynicism."

"I'm applying for every credit card I can get my hands on. Then I'll take huge cash advances and wait for the millennium bug to hose the banks' computers. They'll never be able to bill me." "You would have made a great evil mastermind." "Nah, the hours are too long.""

"I'm an optimist by nature, or perhaps by upbringing?it's hard to know where one leaves off and the other begins?but whatever the cause, I've long seen failure as a tool, not an outcome. I believe that viewing the world in that way can be useful for you too."

"I'm a wanna-be inventor. I'm still working on my perpetual motion machine. Ironically, I can't seem to stop."

"I'm a combination of several characters. Physically, I'm a thinner, shorter, balder version of Dilbert. Same glasses. But attitude-wise, I'm pure Dogbert, with a dash of Wally."

"I'm not convinced that there is actual gluten in the fries."

"I'm primarily just an investor."

"I'm hoarding my knowledge in case I ever need it."

"I'm not happy on vacation. In those rare times when I have three hours with no work I have to do, I'm terribly uncomfortable."

"I'm predicting that we'll finally have a computer will search my e-mail automatically and delete every message that begins with 'thought you'd be interested,' and then give an electrical shock to the sender to remind him or her to stop send that kind of message."

"I'm planning to link up with my survivalist militia group and loot a National Guard ammunitions dump." "Do you know something I don't?" "Hello? The millennium bug? ...the world will plunge into chaos. I don't want to be outgunned.""

"I'm surrendering myself to the realities of the Internet."

"I'm slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles."

"In fact, most people are being squeezed in their little cubicle, and their creativity is forced out elsewhere, because the company can't use it. The company is organized to get rid of variants."

"Imagine an advanced race of aliens who talk to the average human; Do you think they'll be impressed ?"

"Imaginary Raises ? Imaginary raises come in several forms. The first type involves informing employees what they would have gotten as a raise if in fact there had been any money in the budget for that sort of thing:"

"In Japan, employees occasionally work themselves to death. It's called Karoshi. I don't want that to happen to anybody in my department. The trick is to take a break as soon as you hear a bright light and hear dead relatives beckon."

"In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks."

"In most groups the craziest person is in control. It starts because no one wants the problems that come from pissing off a crazy person. It?s just smarter and easier sometimes to let the crazy person have his or her way."

"In today?s world we?re all designers, whether we like it or not. You might be designing PowerPoint presentations or a Web site for your start-up or flyers for your kid?s school event. You?re also furnishing your home, buying clothes you hope look nice to others, and so on. Design used to be the exclusive domain of artists and other experts. Now we?re all expected to have a working understanding of design."

"Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results."

"Intelligence is a measure of how well you function within your level of awareness."