Words matter. These are the best Leonard Mlodinow Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
One thing that feeds into the way you experience the social world is your mood – and one thing that affects your mood is the weather.
When judging a product, we rarely have exhaustive scientific data to go by. As a result, if we are to form a complete picture, we must fill in the blanks, just as we must in our visual perception.
We have emotions for a reason; for instance, imagine pain. You have pain so that if you touch something that’s hot, or if you slam your hand with a hammer, you will pull your hand away and not do that again.
Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.
In physics, all can you do is predict the consequences of physical laws.
Of course our feelings matter. But emotional decisions are usually not the best ones. On the other hand, your emotions can affect your decisions whether you like it or not because the effects can occur on the unconscious level.
Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don’t know intimately.
Scientists attach great importance to the human capacity for spoken language. But we also have a parallel track of nonverbal communication, which may reveal more than our carefully chosen words, and sometimes be at odds with them.
Social connection is such a basic feature of human experience that when we are deprived of it, we suffer.
We all know that players will hit a few more home runs than usual in some years and a few less in others. But the mathematics of chance also predicts that some years they’ll hit a lot more, and some years a lot less.
Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we have evolved a special physical route along which those subliminal feelings of social connection travel from skin to brain.
French culture is known for many great attributes, some of which probably have nothing to do with food, wine, and romance.
I find that predicting the course of our lives is like predicting the weather. You might be able to predict your future in the short term, but the longer you look ahead, the less likely you are to be correct.
I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.
I’ve always loved science, as far back as I can remember. I was very, very curious about how everything worked: the world, the physical universe, chemistry, law. So it was only natural to be curious about how our mind works.
Social rejection doesn’t just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being.
We should keep in mind that it is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios of the future. We should view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism.
Every aspect of our lives plays out in two versions: one conscious, which we are constantly aware of, and the other unconscious, which remains hidden from us.
By subliminal, I mean things that occur in our world that are below the threshold of consciousness but do have a psychological effect on us.
Language is handy, but we humans have social and emotional connections that transcend words and are communicated – and understood – without conscious thought.
Our subliminal mental processes operate outside awareness because they arise in these portions of our mind that are inaccessible to our conscious self; their inaccessibility is due to the architecture of the brain rather than because they have been subject to Freudian motivational forces like repression.
In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of people’s character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us – usually spotty – and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive.
Politicians often misuse science for political ends and to pursue their own agenda.
The pitch, timbre, volume, speed, and cadence of your voice, the speed with which you speak, and even the way you modulate pitch and loudness, are all hugely influential factors in how convincing you are and how people judge your state of mind and character.
Intentionality and talent always matter. An extraordinary feat is certainly made more likely by someone’s focus, hard work, etc. But chance also matters.
We routinely participate in elaborate nonverbal exchanges even when we are not consciously aware of doing so.
On the unconscious level, touch seems to impart a subliminal sense of caring and connection.
My best subjects were chemistry and math.
I believe there is true expertise in some endeavors, and not in others. There is obviously no such thing as expertise in predicting the results of coin tosses, but there is expertise in predicting the behavior of lasers.
Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.
One of the most surprising forms of nonverbal communication is the way we automatically adjust the amount of time we spend looking into another’s eyes as a function of our relative social position.
People intuitively realize that there is strength in numbers and take comfort in the company of others, especially in times of anxiety or need.
The truth is that our unconscious minds are active, purposeful, and independent. Hidden they may be, but their effects are anything but, for they play a critical role in shaping the way our conscious minds experience and respond to the world.
A failure doesn’t mean you are unworthy, nor does it preclude success on the next try.
We all know that looks matter. What most of us don’t understand is just how much looks matter and how difficult it is for us to ignore a person’s appearance when making a social judgment.
