Jonah Lehrer famous quotes

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Reality #People #Important

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Stubborn #Grit #Quitting

Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we're rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Creativity #Rocks #Flames

To have a style is to be stuck.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Style #Stuck

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Silly #Talking #People

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Creativity #Perspective #Creative

When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Art #Venture

The answer will only arrive after we stop looking for it.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Answers

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time--to not be undone by our expertise--is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Ignorance #Creative #Way

While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Human Nature #Notes #Nurture

For too long, we've assumed that there is a single template for human nature, which is why we diagnose most deviations as disorders. But the reality is that there are many different kinds of minds. And that's a very good thing.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Reality #Long #Mind

Rejection process is not fun. It's the red pen on the page, the discarded sketch, sometimes is the only way forward.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Fun #Rejection #Design

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Distance #Home #Creativity

Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Cities #Ideas #Mind

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Creativity #Creating #Genius

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Children #Writing #Mind

Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Creativity #Angel #Blessing

I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Years #Discipline #Labs

I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#People #Giving #Meat

If you're trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Diversity #Creative #Important

It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Art #Reality #Ironic

So let's not pretend that travel is always fun. We don't spend 10 hours lost in the Louvre because we like it, and the view from the top of Machu Picchu probably doesn't make up for the hassle of lost luggage. (More often than not, I need a holiday after my holiday.) We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Fun #Distance #Home

Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. “Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it's always invigorating,” [Charlan] Nemeth [a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley] says. “It wakes us right up.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Views #California #Perspective

The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Leadership #Trying #Way

It's a hard thing to describe. It's just this sense that you got something to say.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Hard Things

A lie told well is just as good as the truth.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Lying #Wells

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Mean #Ideas

Harlow would later write, "If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Writing #Monkeys #Taught

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Memories #Lying #Past

How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense—if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example—then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Loss #Simple #Emotional

The only way to maximize group creativity—to make the whole more than the sum of its parts—is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Mistake #Believe #Creativity

Knowledge can be a subtle curse. When we learn about the world, we also learn all the reasons why the world cannot be changed. We get used to our failures and imperfections. We become numb to the possibilities of something new
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Imperfection #World #Numb

And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Thinking #Answers #Might

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry. If they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere and keep on working until the work is done... I bet there isn't a single highly successful person who has not depended on grit. Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Success #Hard Work #Writing

Creativity is a catchall term for a variety of distinct thought processes.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Creativity #Process #Term

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Creative #Magic #Different

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Age #Talent #Produce

Like a work of art, we exceed our materials. Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery. Neither truth alone is our solution, for our reality exists in plural
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Art #Reality #Needs

The vocational approach at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) helps build grit in students. It teaches them how to be single-minded in pursuit of a goal, to sacrifice for the sake of a passion. The teachers demand hard work from their kids because they know, from personal experience, that creative success requires nothing less.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Teacher #Art #Hard Work

Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Meaningful #Order #Design

...new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.
-- Jonah Lehrer

#Ideas