Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse Quotes

“There’s something fishy about Google’s motto, “Don’t Be Evil.” I’m not saying it’s controversial but it makes you think, “Why bring that up? Why have you suddenly put the subject of being evil on the agenda?” It’s suspicious in the same way as Ukip constantly pointing out how racist they’re not –”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“With a story, as with a well-chosen gift, we’re happiest when surprised by something we didn’t know we wanted.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“British Airways: “No one is actually going to save the environment, so you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Taking it all the way to a disciplinary procedure and talking to a national newspaper is the mark of an unusual man. But is he principled or just stubborn? Righteous or self-righteous? Would it be a better world if everyone was like him? God, no! It would be a much better world if no one was. The only useful role for people like that is to stand up to each other. You need the unbending Churchills to save us from the mass-murdering Hitlers but, with no Hitlers around, the Churchills are annoying as hell.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“The Cookie Monster is anarchic, dynamic and madly driven by a very specific, but also totally random, aim: he wants cookies. He wants to charge around crazily smashing cookies into his mouth. He will never get enough cookies. It’s unclear whether he understands this. Maybe he imagines some future stage of sated calm which he might achieve if, miraculously, he were to obtain all the cookies he desires. Or maybe he is wiser than that and knows it’s all about the journey, his endless quest for biscuits.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Apostrophes, however, I love with all my heart. I support the correctly used apostrophe with that kind of fierce emotional investment in an irrelevance that most people reserve for football.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Brainchild” is an odd word. You hear it a lot in explanatory voiceovers and I suppose I was trying to join in, but I don’t really like it. I’m not keen on the idea that my brain could have a child. Would it be made of brain – a child, made of grey brain, like a squelchy zombie? As metaphors for inspiration go, I prefer the lightbulb.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“If academic endeavour had always been vetted in advance for practicality, we wouldn’t have the aeroplane or the iPhone, just a better mammoth trap.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“How sophisticated our civilisation has become! When one of our ancestors first paused for a moment to select a particularly sharp bit of rock with which to attempt to skin a mammoth, little did he, or she (that’s saved me a letter), know where we’d all end up.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“What women want is still what it's always been: either you or, more likely, not you.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Those were the terms in which my parents, keen for me to grow up well grounded in cynicism, explained things to me. Sweets, chocolates and crisps were all very well, but to buy them by the checkout, on an impulse, was falling into a trap. Instead, I was taught the pleasure of watching other people fall into it and feeling smug. The fact that the sensation of smugness was more pleasurable to me than that of salt or sugar tells you all you need to know about the kind of monster who comes to prominence in modern Britain.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Our level of expectation is crucial to our enjoyment of food, wine, holidays, plays, films and TV shows. We flatter ourselves that we’re objective but our judgments are clouded by our hopes, by whether something was better or worse than we’d anticipated.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“So we surrender to stupidity, do we?” Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Clark Kent, aka Superman, is to leave his reporting job in the forthcoming issue of the comic. Initially I assumed he was protesting against all the nasty commenters on the Daily Planet website: the thousands calling him an arsehole without having paid for the paper, or complaining that he only got to save the world because of his posh upbringing on Krypton.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Meanwhile, there’s no counterbalancing evidence that correctly applied apostrophes keep comma numbers down, or that the grocer’s ones encourage pesky hyphens.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Life goes much more smoothly when everyone’s saying sorry. It’s the second most important social lubricant and, unlike the first, it doesn’t damage your liver.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“I’ve been wasting your time for two paragraphs. I’m still wasting it now. You should stop staring at this page and get out there:”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“Do you think Britain is a great country? I do, basically. It’s embarrassing to admit it. And it feels un-British to admit it, except for the fact that it’s embarrassing, which is a very British sensation. Embarrassment is one of our strongest emotions.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“I know my saying that will annoy some people, but that’s OK because they’re the very people I take most pleasure in annoying. So if you’re thinking about getting annoyed, you might want to consider not giving me the satisfaction and agree with me instead.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“the fundamental truth that we’re just a few billion humans clinging to a rock spinning in space, with certain requirements and problems, and certain resources and skills with which to address them.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“It’s vital to our understanding of a complex world, and to our intellectual dexterity, to be able to hold two different concepts in our heads at once without assuming that they’re mutually exclusive.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“I’m attracted to its inappropriateness. It sticks out, it’s noticeable, which is refreshing in the current era of public discourse, when all prominent figures seem at pains to be blandly appropriate: to show the expected level of respect, rage, shock, support, joy or grief. I like the judge for having taken the trouble to find something odd to say – something interesting and off-message. It’s a rare skill.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“women are on our side as well. “Save yourselves!” they’re imploring. “It’s too late for us, but you could still avoid this fashion and body-image hell!” They’re right – it is too late for them. These customs are too ingrained:”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“The media like nothing more than to be contrarian about their own manufactured consensus on which the paint is still not dry, just as a dog loves nothing more than chasing its own tail. Words spawn more words. Of course, I don’t need to tell you that: you’re reading a collection of a comedian’s opinions about the news.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“dog loves nothing more than chasing its own tail. Words spawn more words. Of course, I don’t need to tell you that: you’re reading a collection of a comedian’s opinions about the news.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“How better to separate actions from any sense of their meaning than with dance? The global success of Gangnam Style has shown the way.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“It’s never a good idea for politicians to get involved in comedy.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“If you’re ever going to throw a book at a wall, it’ll be during the next few pages.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“When watching the news, it’s so easy to forget what most of us are like: pleasant, polite, socially shy. We don’t want rows, we want a quiet life. We feel inadequate because we don’t protest and argue more – we don’t stand up for ourselves. And, in feeling that, we forget that the sort of people who do stand up for themselves are cut from the same cloth as the sort of people you have to stand up to.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

“As Boris Johnson has pointed out, it’s now an offence to swear at a police officer. So should you incur a public-spirited 50,000-volt warning shot – perhaps for brandishing your pension book in an aggressive manner or because a young PC has mistaken your tartan shopping trolley for a piece of field artillery – don’t accidentally shout “Oh fuck!” or you might get sent to prison.”
― David Mitchell, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life