Jo Perry > Jo's Quotes

“One of the first effects of this hyper-democratization of data was to unmoor information from the context required to understand it. On the Internet, facts float about freely and are recombined more according to the preferences of intuition than the rules of cognition:”
― Seth Mnookin, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

“In the fall of 2004, after both WMDs and easy victory were revealed as mirages, a presidential aide made an astounding admission to The New York Times Magazine. The White House, he said, didn’t waste time worrying about those “in what we call the reality-based community” who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” That, the aide said, “is not the way the world really works anymore. . . . When we act, we create our own reality.”
― Seth Mnookin, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

“Don't worry if you're having a hard time following this oversimplified explanation of physics' most challenging problem. For most of us, understanding special relativity is a little like true love: We should consider ourselves lucky if we can grasp hold of it for even one fleeting moment.”
― Seth Mnookin, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear

“She gave me the slow nod women use to indicate that they understand our pain, they admire the courage with which we handle it, and they're absolutely certain that it's all our fault.”
― Timothy Hallinan, Crashed

“What was it like, being married to six actresses?"

"Like being married to one of them. They're all pretty much alike."

"Why'd you keep doing it, then?"

"Hope is the thing with feathers," Trent said, "that tickles your scrotum at the moments when you most need a clear head.”
― Timothy Hallinan, The Fame Thief

“The advice I've been giving to people all my life - that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can't give up politics, it won't give you up - was the advice I should have been taking myself.”
― Christopher Hitchens