Samantha Harvey Quotes

My greatest surprise was that so much of what we think is common sense is just prejudice, and so much of what we think is scientific fact is about as scientific as the idea that the sun revolves around the earth.

I have this assemblage of small facts, which looks like intelligence but no real depth of knowledge about anything. That's why I'm an actor.

Women on the whole are often not as shallow as men are. They can be, but they cut through things a little more easily than men do in terms of that superficial stuff.

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.

The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making.

Why should we not teach our children those principles, upon which we ourselves have thought and acted? Ought we to instill into their tender minds a theory, especially if unfounded, which is contradictory to our own practice, built on the most solid foundation? Why should we reduce them to the cruel dilemma of condemning, either those principles which they have been taught to believe, or those persons whom they have been taught to revere?

We're all biased, right, in many different ways - politically, religiously, ideologically, the way our family raised us - and that's fine. Nobody wants to live in a world where everybody thinks exactly the same. The key, though, is to try to figure out where your biases are holding you back from solving problems.

You cannot question an assumption you do not know you have made.

The hardest assumption to challenge is the one you don't even know you are making.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.

We do not see the lens through which we look.

We just may be the most well-informed, yet least self-aware, people in history.

Instinct' usually just means our conditioning to believe this or believe that, without thinking to investigate.

The best gift an educator can give is to get somebody to become self reflective.

The first indication of a young person's growing smarter is that he no longer understands the things which he used to consider quite intelligible and self-evident.

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense

Our most important thoughts are those that contradict our emotions.

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know

I want to make people think, and I don't want to come across like I am egotistical or that I want to change people's thoughts. I don't believe that as a comic I can convert anyone's opinion. I think I can maybe make someone look in one direction or the other but I can't make a religious person stop believing in God.

Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions.

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

Only the thinking man lives his life, the thoughtless man's life passes him by.