Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality Quotes

“You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she's not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn't an excuse, someone else being in charge isn't an excuse, even trying your best isn't an excuse. There just aren't any excuses, you've got to get the job done no matter what." Harry's face tightened. "That's why I say you're not thinking responsibly, Hermione. Thinking that your job is done when you tell Professor McGonagall - that isn't heroine thinking. Like Hannah being beat up is okay then, because it isn't your fault anymore. Being a heroine means your job isn't finished until you've done whatever it takes to protect the other girls, permanently." In Harry's voice was a touch of the steel he had acquired since the day Fawkes had been on his shoulder. "You can't think as if just following the rules means you've done your duty.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“If you didn't predict that something would happen, if it took you completely by surprise, then what you believed about the world when you didn't see it coming, isn't enough to explain [what has happened].”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“And her hand kept remembering the sensation of the cloak against her fingers, replaying it over and over in her mind. There was a power to the feeling that compelled her thoughts to return to it, and to the song she'd heard / hadn't heard in a part of her mind and magic which now lay silent once more.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Nestled up against the wall, where Professor Quirrell had stumbled, glistened the crushed remains of a beautiful blue beetle.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“There must have been something about Harry Potter.

It was Thursday for everyone, after all, and yet this sort of thing didn't seem to happen to anyone else.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Hermione's eyes lit up with a terrible light of helpfulness and something in the back of Harry's brain screamed in desperate humiliation.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Boy, you resolve not to go down the path of a Dark Lord and the universe starts messing with you the instant the Hat comes off your head. Some days it just doesn't pay to fight destiny. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to start on my resolution to not be a Dark Lord.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Apparently people who were in books actually sounded like a book when they talked. This was quite the surprising discovery.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Professor McGonagall says that I'm the most Ravenclaw person she's ever seen or heard tell of in legend, so much so that Rowena herself would tell me to get out more, whatever that means, and that I'll undoubtedly end up in Ravenclaw House if the hat isn't screaming too loudly for the rest of us to make out any words, end quote.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you," Harry recited the proverb.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Evil happens, thought Harry, it doesn’t mean anything or teach us anything, except to not be evil.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“They crossed the boundary from Christmas Eve to Christmas Day within that timeless void where Earthly rotations meant nothing, the one true everlasting Silent Night.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“You know, Mr. Lupin," Harry said, "it really takes a baroque interpretation to think that somebody would be walking around, pondering how death is just something we all have to accept, and communicate their state of mind by saying, 'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.' Maybe someone else thought it sounded poetic and picked up the phrase and tried to interpret it differently, but whoever said it first didn't like death much." Sometimes it puzzled Harry how most people didn't seem to even notice when they were twisting something around to the 180-degree opposite of its first obvious reading. It couldn't be a raw brainpower thing, people could see the obvious reading of most other English sentences. "Also 'shall be destroyed' refers to a change of future state, so it can't be about the way things are now.”
― eliezer yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Hermione," Harry said seriously, as he started to dig down into the red-velvet pouch again, "don't punish yourself when a bright idea doesn't work out. You've got to go through a lot of flawed ideas to find one that might work. And if you send your brain negative feedback by frowning when you think of a flawed idea, instead of realizing that idea-suggesting is good behavior by your brain to be encouraged, pretty soon you won't think of any ideas at all." Harry put down two heart-shaped chocolates beside the book. "Here, have another chocolate. Besides the one from earlier, I mean. This one is to reinforce your brain for generating a good candidate strategy.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“There's history books you haven't read," Harry said quietly. "There's books you haven't read yet, Hermione, and they might give you a sense of perspective. A few centuries earlier - I think it was definitely still around in the seventeenth century - it was a popular village entertainment to take a wicker basket, or a bundle, with a dozen live cats in it, and -"

"Stop," she said.

"- roast it over a bonfire. Just a regular celebration. Good clean fun. And I'll give them this, it was cleaner fun than burning women they thought were witches. Because the way people are built, Hermione, the way people are built to feel inside -" Harry put a hand over his own heart, in the anatomically correct position, then paused and moved his hand up to point toward his head at around the ear level, "- is that they hurt when they see their friends hurting. Someone inside their circle of concern, a member of their own tribe. That feeling has an off-switch, an off-switch labeled 'enemy' or 'foreigner' or sometimes just 'stranger'. That's how people are, if they don't learn otherwise. So, no, it does not indicate that Draco Malfoy was inhuman or even unusually evil, if he grew up believing that it was fun to hurt his enemies -”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Harry had run into trouble falling asleep Friday night, which he had anticipated might happen, and so he had decided to take the obvious advance precaution of buying a sleeping potion; and to prevent it from constituting a visible sign that he was nervous, he had decided to buy it off Fred and George a couple of months earlier.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“All the sensations of that bright world were really happening in that
quiet cave of bone you called your skull, the place where
you lived and never, ever left. If you really wanted to
say hello to someone, to the actual person, you wouldn't
shake their hand, you'd knock gently on their skull and say "How
are you doing in there?" That was what people were, that was where
they really lived.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“So Harry was going to leave this problem to Fred and George, and they would discuss all the aspects of it and brainstorm anything they thought might be remotely relevant. And they shouldn't try to come up with an actual solution until they'd finished doing that, unless of course they did happen to randomly think of something awesome, in which case they could write it down for afterward and then go back to thinking. And he didn't want to hear back from them about any so-called failures to think of anything for at least a week. Some people spent decades trying to think of things.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Harry's thoughts flashed back to possibly the worst moment of his life to date, those long seconds of blood-freezing horror beneath the Hat, when he thought he'd already failed. He'd wished then to fall back just a few minutes in time and change something, anything before it was too late...

And then it had turned out to not be too late after all.

Wish granted.

You couldn't change history. But you could get it right to start with. Do something differently the first time around.

This whole business with seeking Slytherin's secrets... seemed an awful lot like the sort of thing where, years later, you would look back and say, 'And that was where it all started going wrong.'

And he would wish desperately for the ability to fall back through time and make a different choice...

Wish granted. Now what?”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Are you familiar with the economic concept of 'replacement value'? Hermione's replacement value is infinite! There's nowhere else I can go to buy another one!”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“She was taken to St. Mungo's, where," the Headmistress now sounded slightly perturbed, "a standard diagnostic Charm showed Miss Granger as a healthy unicorn in excellent physical condition except that her mane needs combing.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Если этого недостаточно, чтобы мотивировать вас, позвольте добавить: если вы не будете помогать в распространении рациональности, Гермиона расстроится. Вы же не хотите её расстраивать?”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“A Gryffindor would say that people don't become who they should be, because they're afraid.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Awww, it sounds like someone fell prey to the planning fallacy.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“He felt wretched at this point, he'd just told off Gandalf essentially, and Dumbledore's kindness was only making him feel worse.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Исправлять давно минувшее очень легко, надо просто вовремя подумать о будущем.”
― Элиезер Юдковски, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Minerva firmly believed that you only ought to worry about Time if you were a clock.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Because I still would've been surrounded by idiots, and I wouldn't have been able to kill them," Professor Quirrell said mildly. "Killing idiots is my great joy in life, and I'll thank you not to speak ill of it until you've tried it for yourself.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Harry's brain still felt broken. "He was trying to kill me."

"Oh, for Merlin's sake - yes, he was trying to kill you. Get used to it. Only boring people never have that experience.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“Dinner passed with surprising rapidity. Harry tried to sample at least a little of all the weird new foods he saw. His curiosity couldn't stand the thought of not knowing how something tasted. Thank goodness this wasn't a restaurant where you had to order only one thing and you never found out what all the other things on the menu tasted like. Harry hated that, it was like a torture chamber for anyone with a spark of curiosity: Find out about only one of the mysteries on this list, ha ha ha!”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality