Quotes by Researchers

Regarding his friend's insight after losing her spouse to cancer: "She told me she had plenty of people to do things with but nobody to do nothing with.
Peter Bach
Cruelty is easy, cheap and rampant.
Brené Brown
Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing.
Evgeny Morozov
Serpentining" means trying to control a situation, backing out of it, pretending it's not happening, or maybe even pretending that you don't care. We use it to dodge conflict, discomfort, possible confrontation, the potential for shame or hurt, and/or criticism (self- or other-inflicted). Serpentining can lead to hiding out, pretending, avoidance, procrastination, rationalizing, blaming, and lying.I have a tendency to want to serpentine when I feel vulnerable. If I have to make a difficult call, I'll try to script both sides of it. I'll convince myself that I should wait, I'll draft an e-mail while telling myself that it's better in writing, and I'll think of a million other things to do. I'll emotionally run back and forth until I'm exhausted.
Brené Brown
Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Brené Brown
Waldo was not alone by any means in trembling over an unjust plight. With the recent uproar over drunk driving, arrests had skyrocketed and detention centers all around the country were overflowing with bewildered motorists. Many of these dumbstruck, inebriated souls had been transferred and thoughtfully placed behind the same bars that held back murderers and rapists. Unfortunately for our heroes, they now joined the ranks of these luckless citizens.
Donald Jeffries
Believe what you wish, but prove what you can.
Carmine Savastano
Waldo nodded and waved goodbye pathetically, like a young father going off to war. tAs soon as the door was closed and he was gone, Jeanne squelched her own apprehensions, opened the paper and read the poem Waldo had written for her:One taste of Jeanne and out I flewWildly, madly, in no directionBut hers, and yet so straight and trueI fly towards her with no protectionIt feels so strange to move this wayThough I should land, desire it seemsMoves in strange circles and so I stayDisoriented beyond my wildest dreams.
Donald Jeffries
Try this." O'Grady smiled. "It's the only thing we drink. It'll warm your insides."t"What is it?" Asked the ever cautious Waldo.t"We call it the Forest Flaming Special. Go ahead-drink up."t"Well, okay...." Waldo lifted the cup and nearly dropped it when saw his name printed clearly on the side. t"We've been expecting you." Explained Fred, beginning to laugh.
Donald Jeffries
Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.
Brené Brown
Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.
Brené Brown
Lies propagate, that's what I'm saying. You've got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that's connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept on trying to cover it up, sooner or later you'd even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn't work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn't work. So if someone wants to go on defending the lie, they've got to get you to disbelieve in the experimental method. Like, the experimental method is just for merely scientific kinds of medicine, not amazing alternative medicine like theirs. Or a good and virtuous person should believe as strongly as they can, no matter what the evidence says. Or truth doesn't exist and there's no such thing as objective reality. A lot of common wisdom like that isn't just mistaken, it's anti-epistemology, it's systematically wrong. Every rule of rationality that tells you how to find the truth, there's someone out there who needs you to believe the opposite. If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy; and there's a lot of people out there telling lies.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Sometimes Harry thought the deepest split in his personality wasn't anything to do with his dark side; rather it was the divide between the altruistic and forgiving Abstract Reasoning Harry, versus the frustrated and angry Harry In The Moment.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
In a moral dilemma where you lost something either way, making the choice would feel bad either way, so you could temporarily save yourself a little mental pain by refusing to decide. At the cost of not being able to plan anything in advance, and at the cost of incurring a huge bias toward inaction or waiting until too late...
Eliezer Yudkowsky
The Headmaster told Professor Flitwick that this was, indeed, a secret and delicate matter of which he had already been informed, and that he did not think pressing it at this time would help me or anyone. Professor Flitwick started to say something about the Headmaster's usual plotting going much too far, and I had to interrupt at that point and explain that it had been my own idea and not anything the Headmaster forced me into, so Professor Flitwick spun around and started lecturing me, and the Headmaster interrupted him and said that as the Boy-Who-Lived I was doomed to have weird and dangerous adventures so I was safer if I got into them on purpose instead of waiting for them to happen by accident, and that was when Professor Flitwick threw up his little hands and started shrieking in a high-pitched voice at both of us about how he didn't care what we were cooking up together, but this wasn't ever to happen again for as long as I was in Ravenclaw House or he would have me thrown out and I could go to Gryffindor which was where all this Dumbledoring belonged -
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Someday," said the Boy-Who-Lived, "when the distant descendants of Homo sapiens are looking back over the history of the galaxy and wondering how it all went so wrong, they will conclude that the original mistake was when someone taught Hermione Granger how to read.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you’ve seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Like that's the only reason anyone would ever buy a first-aid kit? Don't take this the wrong way, Professor McGonagall, but what sort of crazy children are you used to dealing with?""Gryffindors," spat Professor McGonagall, the word carrying a freight of bitterness and despair that fell like an eternal curse on all youthful heroism and high spirits.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
When you are older, you will learn that the first and foremost thing which any ordinary person does is nothing.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling!
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Those who replace love in people’s life with bread, are deceitful, and call their deceit “pious”.
Alireza Salehi Nejad
What are Christians known for? Outsiders think our moralizing, our condemnations, and our attempts to draw boundaries around everything. Even if these standards are accurate and biblical, they seem to be all we have to offer. And our lives are a poor advertisement for the standards. We have set the gameboard to register lifestyle points; then we are surprised to be trapped by our mistakes. The truth is we have invited the hypocrite image.
David Kinnaman
Awakening as a moment of now Awakening as an experienceAwakening as a momentthat is the same - today, yesterday or tomorrowAwakening of a Hinduist, of a Buddhist, of a Christianof a believer or a nonbeliever Awakening that lives within every single cellAwakening within no qualitiesas emptiness of Consciousnessas direct contactwith love and light and lifeexperiencedwith every breathAwakening as resting within true natureas acting from the true natureas RememberingAwakening as openingto the possibility of Now
Nataša Nuit Pantović
If the only hammer you are given is the Internet, it's not surprising that every possible social and political problem is presented as an online nail.
Evgeny Morozov
Every girl who aspires ultimately to outfit her own home should assemble a library on architectural styles and on furniture both traditional and modern. As few brides can buy expensively illustrated volumes and household equipment simultaneously, a girl should begin asking parents for books early in life, probably while still in the primary grades...
Johnson O'Connor
Western doctors are like poor plumbers. They treat a splashing tube by cleaning up the water. These plumbers are extremely apt at drying up the water, constantly inventing new, expensive, and refined methods of drying up water. Somebody should teach them how to close the tap.
Denis Parsons Burkitt
Her name, said the Oracle, will this time be Ama, a female that sleeps in every one of us, Yin of Creation, a wisdom guide that with her purity extinguishes thirst for spiritual longings. She is the one that stands on a crescent moon with stars in her hair, pouring water from jars of her soul into lakes of emotions, awakening compassion for humankind and its Chaos, nourishing Earth and Her constant renewal.
Nataša Nuit Pantović
One hundred twenty-nine women with documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked about abuse history. Seventeen years following the initial report of the abuse, 80 of the women recalled the victimization. One in 10 women (16% of those who recalled the abuse) reported that at some time in the past they had forgotten about the abuse. Those with a prior period of forgetting--the women with "recovered memories"--were younger at the time of abuse and were less likely to have received support from their mothers than the women who reported that they had always remembered their victimization. The women who had recovered memories and those who had always remembered had the same number of discrepancies when their accounts of the abuse were compared to the reports from the early
Linda M. Williams
You're still alive. That means you're winning.
Rachel Cotterill
The water beneath the Temple was both actual and metaphorical, existing as springs and streams, as spiritual energy, and as a symbol of the receptive or lunar aspect of nature. The meaning of that principle is too wide and elusive for it to be given any one name, so in the terminology of ancient science it was given a number, 1,080. Its polar opposite, the positive, solar force in the universe, was also referred to as a number 666. These two numbers, which have an approximate golden-section relationship of 1:1.62, were at the root of the alchemical formula that expressed the supreme purpose of the Temple. Its polar opposite, the positive, solar force in the universe, was also referred to as a number 666. Not merely was it used to generate energy from fusion of atmospheric and terrestrial currents, but it also served to combine in harmony all the correspondences of those forces on every level of creation.
John Michell
The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.
Brené Brown
Operate your household like a productive business.
Thomas J. Stanley
We've been told that with regard to seduction, "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker," but in truth, rather, properly selected: "candy makes randy; liquor makes desire flicker"; or, as Shakespeare's porter said to Macduff: "[drink] provokes the desire but it takes away the performance." The wines and beers of antiquity, however, which were potent infusions of innumerable psychoactive plants, often requiring dilution with water and in which alcohol served rather as preservative then inebriating active principle.
Rick Doblin
Pious” is a sword that the clever always use it to eliminate the truth.
Alireza Salehi Nejad
Only God can tell a truly plausible lie.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to giving help, you attach value to needing help.
Brené Brown
If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!
Brené Brown
You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.
Brené Brown
Shame hates it when we reach out and tell our story. It hates having words wrapped around it- it can't survive being shared. Shame loves secrecy. When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.
Brené Brown
...research tells us that we judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good about my body, I don't go around making fun of other people's weight or appearance. We're hard on each other because we're using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived shaming deficiency.
Brené Brown
There is a quiet transformation happening that is moving us from 'turning on each other' to 'turning toward each other.' Without question, that transformation will require shame resilience. If we're willing to dare greatly and risk vulnerability with each other, worthiness has the power to set us free.
Brené Brown
Knowing what I do now, I think about shame and worthiness in this way: 'It's the album, not the picture.' If you imagine opening up a photo album, and many of the pages are full eight-by-ten photos of shaming events, you'll close that album and walk away thinking, Shame defines that story. If, on the other hand, you open that album and see a few small photos of shame experiences, but each one is surrounded by pictures of worthiness, hope, struggle, resilience, courage, failure, success, and vulnerability, the shame experience are only a part of a larger story. They don't define the album.
Brené Brown
When we are experience shame we are often thrown into crisis mode...In this mode, the neocortex is bypassed and our acess to advanced, rational, calm thinking and processing of emotion all but disappears...we find ourselves becoming aggressive, wanting to run and hide and feeling paralyzed...
Brené Brown
In fact, all of us are very susceptible to having our humiliating experiences turn to shame, especially when the person who is putting us down is someone with whom we have a valued relationship or someone whom we perceive to have more power than we do...
Brené Brown
To know shame is to be human. And to have the capacity for empathy is also to be human.
Brené Brown
Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.
Brené Brown
Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.
Brené Brown
Our stories are not meant for everyone. Hearing them is a privilege, and we should always ask ourselves this before we share: "Who has earned the right to hear my story?" If we have one or two people in our lives who can sit with us and hold space for our shame stories, and love us for our strengths and struggles, we are incredibly lucky. If we have a friend, or small group of friends, or family who embraces our imperfections, vulnerabilities, and power, and fills us with a sense of belonging, we are incredibly lucky.
Brené Brown
Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.
Brené Brown
Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.
Brené Brown
At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities.
Jean Houston
Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare ourselves and our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.
Brené Brown
A fool friend always does something that the enemy wishes.
Alireza Salehi Nejad
I'm lazy! I hate work! Hate hard work in all its forms! Clever shortcuts, that's all I'm about!
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Logic stays true, wherever you may go,So logic never tells you where you live.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Although slavery has long been a part of human history, American chattel slavery represents a case of human trauma incomparable in scope, duration and consequence to any other incidence of human enslavement.
Joy DeGruy
Okay, so either (a) I just teleported somewhere else entirely (b) they can fold space like no one's business or (c) they are simply ignoring all the rules.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Some websites are completely optimized for simple conver- sion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.
Erika Hall
Some websites are completely optimized for simple conversion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.
Erika Hall