"My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible)

"It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting."
— A.J. Jacobs

"Scrabble - The game is available in Braille. That’s a nice fact. This makes me feel better about humanity for some reason. I can’t really explain why."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"I am officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible)

"A few weeks later, I’m in a fluorescent-lit classroom in Chelsea awaiting the start of the official Mensa test. I’m sitting next to a guy who’s doing a series of elaborate neck stretches, like we’re about to engage in a vigorous rugby match. He’s neatly laid out four types of gum on his Formica desk: Juicy Fruit, Wrigley Spearmint, Big Red, and Eclipse. I hate this guy. I hope to God he’s not a genius."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"If the Britannica has taught me anything, it's to be more careful. I don't want to turn into an unseemly noun or verb or adjective someday. I don't want to be like Charles Boycott, the landlord in Ireland who refused to lower rents during a famine, leading to the original boycott. I don't want to be like Charles Lynch, who headed an irregular court that hung loyalists during the Revolutionary War. I can't have "Jacobs" be a verb that means staying home all the time or washing your hands too frequently."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"Plus, in one of his e-mails, the guy said he didn't like pancakes. What kind of asshole doesn't like pancakes? "
— A.J. Jacobs (The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment)

"I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible)

"Let me tell you, though: being the smartest boy in the world wasn’t easy. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. On the contrary, it was a huge burden. First, there was the task of keeping my brain perfectly protected. My cerebral cortex was a national treasure, a masterpiece of the Sistine Chapel of brains. This was not something that could be treated frivolously. If I could have locked it in a safe, I would have. Instead, I became obsessed with brain damage."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"Did you hear about the middle Eastern potentate?" he asked me. "This potentate called a meeting of the wise men in the kingdom, and said, "I want you to gather all the world's knowledge together in one place so that my sons can read it and learn."The wise men went off, and after year, they came back with twenty-five volumes of knowledge. This potentate looked at it and he said, "No. It's too long. Make it shorter." So the wise men went off for another year. When they came back, they gave the potentate a piece of paper with one sentence on it. A single sentence. You know what the sentence was?"
Bob looked at me. I shook my head.
"The sentence was: "This too shall pass."
Bob paused, let it sink in: "I heard that when I was very young and it has always stuck with me."
— A.J. Jacobs

"Ecclesiastes
This is a book of the Old Testament. I don't believe I've ever read this section of the Bible - I know my Genesis pretty well and my Ten Commandments (I like lists), but I'm hazy on a lot of the other parts. Here, the Britannica provides a handy Cliff Notes version of Ecclesiastes:

[the author's] observations on life convinced him that 'the race is not swift, nor the battle strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all' (9:11). Man's fate, the author maintains, does not depend on righteous or wicked conduct but is an inscrutable mystery that remains hidden in God (9:1). All attempts to penetrate this mystery and thereby gain the wisdom necessary to secure one's fate are 'vanity' or futile. In the face of such uncertainty, the author's counsel is to enjoy the good things that God provides while one has them to enjoy.

This is great. I've accumulated hundreds of facts in the last seven thousand pages, but i've been craving profundity and perspective. Yes, there was that Dyer poem, but that was just cynical. This is the real thing: the deepest paragraph I've read so far in the encyclopedia. Instant wisdom. It couldn't be more true: the race does not go to the swift. How else to explain the mouth-breathing cretins I knew in high school who now have multimillion-dollar salaries? How else to explain my brilliant friends who are stuck selling wheatgrass juice at health food stores? How else to explain Vin Diesel's show business career? Yes, life is desperately, insanely, absurdly unfair. But Ecclesiastes offers exactly the correct reaction to that fact. There's nothing to be done about it, so enjoy what you can. Take pleasure in the small things - like, for me, Julie's laugh, some nice onion dip, the insanely comfortable beat-up leather chair in our living room.

I keep thinking about Ecclesiastes in the days that follow. What if this is the best the encyclopedia has to offer? What if I found the meaning of life on page 347 of the E volume? The Britannica is not a traditional book, so there's no reason why the big revelation should be at the end. "
— A.J. Jacobs

"Back to the books. The world’s largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang—it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a sad little story. All that work, all that planning, all those expectations—then nothing. Now it just sits there in Russia, a big metallic symbol of failure. I have a moment of silence for the silent bell."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"I always thought the name of Utah’s major newspaper was some sort of weird misspelling of the word “desert.” But no, Deseret is the “land of the honeybee,” according to the Book of Mormon. I guess I should have figured they would have caught a typo in the masthead after 154 years."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"In trying to avoid one sin I've committed another."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible)

"I was smart enough to know that I shouldn't tell anyone the reason I needed that icy air. No need to spill the secret that I was the genius of all geniuses, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 1980s. That would just inspire envy and skepticism. So I'd just stare at the closed window and stew. If ten minutes went by without my lungs getting fresh air, I panicked. I needed to make sure the monoxide hadn't eaten my cranium. "
— A.J. Jacobs

"Behavior shapes emotions."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible)

"I know the name of Turkey's leading avant-guard publication. I know that John Quincy Adams married for money. I know that Bud Abbott was a double-crosser, that absentee ballots are very popular in Ireland, and that dwarves have prominent buttocks."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move. "
— A.J. Jacobs (The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment)

"Huh. I’m not sure how to respond to this. Is Alex Trebek black? He sure doesn’t look black. He looks pretty white to me. He looks like the quintessence, the very incarnation, of whiteness."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"The literal Greek translation is “school for naked exercise.” Which made toweling off the stationary bike even more important."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"Mormons were the first settlers. Not sure Joseph Smith would approve of today’s topless showgirls and liquor. Though he would like the volcano at the Mirage. Everybody likes the volcano."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"You tell them you have a hunger and a thirst. You don't sit at the same table but you have a hunger and a thirst."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible)

"Which just goes to prove. Not everybody can be Herman Cappachino. Whatever that means."
— A.J. Jacobs (Fractured Fairy Tales)

"I love it when the Bible gives Emily Post-like tips that are both wise and easy to follow."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible)

"The key is to pump up your righteous anger and mute your petty resentment. I'll be happy if I can get that balance to fifty-fifty."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible)

"Reading the Britannica is like channel surfing on a very highbrow cable system, one with no shortage of shows about Sumerian cities."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)

"The key is to take advantage of the free time your health problem creates, to use it as a chance to explore some unknown creative alleyway."
— A.J. Jacobs (The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World)