Shervin Pishevar Quotes

I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.

I've learnt to not look that deeply into what people say as it's mostly a reflection of themselves.

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.

Brain research tells us that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony, which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.

We're not that much smarter than we used to be, even though we have much more information - and that means the real skill now is learning how to pick out the useful information from all this noise.

I was on a panel with Marshall McLuhan in Canada. Someone says, 'Mr. McLuhan, I read your book, and I disagree with you.' And he says, 'Oh, you read my book? Then you only know half the story.'

If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.

I study people all the time. For some reason, we're not very good at seeing what's there or hearing what we're hearing.

Humans make errors. We make errors of fact and errors of judgment. We have blind spots in our field of vision and gaps in our stream of attention. Sometimes we can't even answer the simplest questions.

Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgment.

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

A man hears only what he understands.

People are born with the ability to make judgments. And they can't help but use the information they have to divine something about the world they're in. Making categorical judgments, in large, helps our society.

It really doesn't matter if it happened exactly how I say it happened.

When I open my mouth and talk, sometimes people say they are amazed of my intellect. I don't know if that's because I truly speak in a way that people can understand or feel a certain way, or because they don't expect it. I don't know. That's something I am curious about.

I just have pretty good recall of information.

A computer can have so much more in its brain that a human can.

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well.

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle with the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expected or hoped to see than on what was really there.

The strength of your memory dictates the size of your reality

The quality of your thinking is largely determined by the quantity of the information you have with which to work