Jeff Lindsay Quotes

Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature is so constituted.

I can measure the motion of bodies but I cannot measure human folly.

Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don’t have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.

People in this world are not often logical.

The vast majority of human beings are not interested in reason or satisfied with what it teaches.

All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.

You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas.

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.

I think irrationality is one of the scariest things in the world.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Markets do very weird things because it reacts to how people behave, and sometimes people are a little screwy.

Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

It's the irrational things that interest me.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.

That crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic, George Francis Train! He is as destitute of principle as he is of sense, and is fast gravitating toward a lunatic asylum. He may be of use in drawing an audience; but so would a kangaroo, a gorilla, or a hippopotamus.

Economic theory does not work with human beings. We are far too messy.

That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.

Sometimes people's behavior is seemingly unexplainable.

I'm always shocked by what people react to.

When you make people angry, they act in accordance with their baser instincts, often violently and irrationally. When you inspire people, they act in accordance with their higher instincts, sensibly and rationally. Also, anger is transient, whereas inspiration sometimes has a life-long effect.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.