The Folly of Fools Quotes

“The great sage Thales once put the general matter succinctly "Oh master," he was asked, "what is the most difficult thing to do?" "To know thyself", he replied. "And the easiest?" "To give advice to others.”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“A very disturbing feature of overconfidence is that it often appears to be poorly associated with knowledge—that is, the more ignorant the individual, the more confident he or she maybe.”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“However much we champion freedom of thought, we actually spend much of our time censoring input. We seek out publications that mirror or support our prior views and largely avoid those that don't.”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“Revolutionary moments often seem to occur in history when large numbers of individuals have a change in consciousness, regarding themselves and their status”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“A very disturbing feature of overconfidence is that it often appears to be poorly associated with knowledge - that is, the more ignorant the individual, the more confident he or she might be.”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“Denial is apt to be quicker than the truth, and so are well-rehearsed lies.”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“I know nothing about economics and—from evolutionary logic—could not have predicted a thing about the collapse of 2008, but I have disagreed for thirty years with an alleged science called economics that has resolutely failed to ground itself in underlying knowledge, at a cost to all of us”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“Recent work suggests that parasites and”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“What we do know about the costs or benefits associated with the name-letter effect are nonetheless surprising. Preference for one’s own first initials can lead to a real cost”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“It is of some interest to know whether animals show cognitive dissonance and at what age children show such effects. Birds often show the human bias of preferring items for which the birds work harder (in their case”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“One can even reverse exactly who is saying what to whom. Gore Vidal remembers an interview with Tom Brokaw on NBC’s morning Today Show in which Brokaw began by asking about Vidal’s writings on bisexuality”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“One can”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“Although the critical evidence is lacking for adult humans”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“a sizable minority of people do not show a placebo effect”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“Perhaps one of the most spectacular cases of sexual mimicry is performed by a tiny blister beetle”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“This is precisely what social psychology appears to show—derogation of others appears more often as a defensive strategy that people adopt when threatened. Contrast two sets of college students who have been told (at random) that they scored high or low on an IQ test. Only those scoring low later choose to denigrate a Jewish woman (but not a non-Jewish) woman on a variety of traits. Apparently association with intellectual achievement is sufficient reason to denigrate the woman if one’s own intellectual powers are in doubt. Likewise”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life