How Not to Be Wrong Quotes

“equality can feel like oppression to people who have always been privileged.”
― James O'Brien, How Not To Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind

“These days, I am able to see that life is defined by two forces: the external and the internal. We sometimes seem so completely conditioned to believe that our happiness depends upon external forces, over which we can exercise next to no control, that we forget not only that it is determined by the internal, but also that we can, with help and guidance, exercise some very real control over that. Next time you catch yourself criticising or mocking someone for some aspect of their existence over which they have little or no control, try asking yourself why you care about it. I never cease to be stunned by how often, when I try this simple exercise, I turn out to have no answer at all.”
― James O'Brien, How Not To Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind

“A xenophobe is someone who attacks people born somewhere else as a way of denying that his own life has become so small and (in his secret heart) worthless that he has to pretend a geographical accident is some sort of achievement. Moreover, he has to hate everybody who didn’t win the bogus jackpot in order to shore up the notion that his ‘prize’ has any real value at all.”
― James O'Brien, How Not To Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind

“Hate, at its heart, is about the exercise of power. In my experience, public hate usually involves the exercise of one, unhealthy, type of power in an effort to disguise or deny the absence of another, altogether healthier, type.”
― James O'Brien, How Not To Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind

“One of the greatest ironies of our times is surely the rise of the professional complainer apparently blind to the fact that their chief complaint is that ‘other people’ do too much complaining.”
― James O'Brien, How Not To Be Wrong: The Art of Changing Your Mind