Rachel Cohn Quotes

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

It's not what you don't know that kills you but what you know that isn't so.

If you look at the history of big obstacles in understanding our world, there's usually an intuitive assumption underlying them that's wrong.

No one is served or benefitted by believing in false or faulty ideas.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

There are men who would quickly love each other if once they were speak to each other; for when they spoke they would discover that their souls had only separated by phantoms and delusions.

Paranoia is just another word for ignorance.

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so.

I think certain people like to torture me because they think I've had it easier than I actually have and they think: 'Oh, she's got this, she's got that, she's always had everything perfect,' and it's sooo not true.

A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people.

Without any physical, chemical, and biological fundamentals, and with equally poor understanding of basic economic forces, it is no wonder that people will believe anything.

Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that.

We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong

It's not what we don't know that hurts us, people say. It's what we believe is true that isn't that does the damage.

I suppose I really seemed mad, then; but it was only through the awfulness of having said nothing but the truth, and being thought to be deluded.

The problem with assumptions is that we believe they are the truth.

I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.

When we traded the results of our fantasies, it seemed to us-and rightly-that we had proceeded by unwarranted associations, by shortcuts so extraordinary that, if anyone had accused us of really believing them, we would have been ashamed.

The terrorists, they have the wrong perception. They believe that the other group is trying to destroy them as a religion, as a civilization. So they want to abolish us, to kill us before we can kill them. And the antiterrorist may think very much the same way - that these are terrorists and they are trying to eliminate us, so we have to eliminate them first. Both sides are motivated by fear, by anger, and by wrong perception.

Ninety-five percent of the beliefs we have stored in our minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these lies.

Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world.

The most common of all follies is to believe in the palpably untrue.

It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it.

Believing is such a comfort that it's hard to give up a belief just because it isn't true.

Most people believe they know how they themselves think, how others think too, and even how institutions evolve. But they are wrong. Their understanding is based on folk psychology, the grasp of human nature by common sense ¾ defined (by Einstein) as everything learned to the age of 18 ¾ shot through with misconceptions, and only slightly advanced over ideas employed by the Greek philosophers