Marilyn vos Savant Quotes

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.

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

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant.

Be able to hiccup silently, or at least without alerting neighbors to your situation. The first hiccup is an exception.

Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.

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?

Know the official post office abbreviations for all 50 states without having to consult a list.

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.

There's plenty of intelligence in the world, but the courage to do things differently is in short supply.

Attention-deficit disorders seem to abound in modern society, and we don't know the cause.

Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.

Many people feel they must multi-task because everybody else is multitasking, but this is partly because they are all interrupting each other so much.

Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.

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.

The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.

If your head tells you one thing, and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.

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

Be in the habit of getting up bright and early on the weekends. Why waste such precious time in bed?

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

Be able to correctly pronounce the words you would like to speak and have excellent spoken grammar.

What women want is what men want. They want respect.

A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.

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.

Know what to do if you feel faint or dizzy, especially if you might fall and hit your head.

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.

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.

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.

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

Know where to find the sunrise and sunset times and note how the sky looks at those times, at least once.

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

Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.

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

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

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.

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

Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table.

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

Know how to travel from your town to a nearby town without a car, either by bus or by rail.

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.

Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn't. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces.

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.

I love having ten times as much stuff to do as I can possibly find time to do. That way, I can pick the one-tenth that I want to do most. But if I only have enough to just occupy all my time, I'm stuck doing all of whatever stuff it happens to be.

Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.

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.

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.

Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering.

I believe a 'talented' person is one who has learned how to effectively cultivate and polish any of the many desirable capabilities with which most of us are born but few of us nurture.