Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Quotes

There is a tendency to overestimate the positive things in our lives and underestimate the possibility of negative things

Men freely believe that which they desire.

One of the major biases in risky decision making is optimism. Optimism is a source of high-risk thinking.

People gravitate toward information that implies a happier outlook for them.

Our thoughts about an event can have a dramatic effect on how we go through the event itself. When our expectations are low, it's easy to be pleasantly surprised. When they're not, we're vulnerable to painful disappointment. Because of this, many people spend a good deal of effort trying to avoid developing high hopes about anything.

There is an interesting scientific dispute about realism and optimism. Some find that very optimistic people have benign illusions about themselves. These people may think they have more control, or more skill, than they actually do. Others have found that optimistic people have a good handle on reality. The jury is still out.

Self-delusion is one of the funniest things there is.

To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can't stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do 'anything.' If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.

Most of us...are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations

The Optimism Bias: This is why our warnings on cigarette packages go unheeded. Yes smoking kills 6 million people per year. Smokers believe that it will kill the other guy.

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed

For people at the bottom who are really doing badly — those in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile — they think their work falls in the 60th or 55th percentile, so, above average. People at the bottom still think they're outperforming other people.

It's some weird idea to think that you've always got to say everything is great and perfect.

My mom was so good at hiding the bad in life that I thought all of life was good.

I guess a little bit of delusion can go a long way.

When you're young, you envision happiness in such an idealized way.

Our belief is often strongest when it should be weakest. That is the nature of hope.

The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire

I'm not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type.

What does it say about us that we are rarely perplexed by the good things that come our way, only the bad?

The human propensity is to believe that flukes of good fortune will never come to an end.

I'm like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.

Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best - life wouldn't be worth living if we didn't have hope. And I also do think that human beings often do do wonderful, correct, brilliant things. So, on balance, I'd like to be optimistic about the future.

People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.