Kathryn Schulz famous quotes

03-28-2025

The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Miracle #Mind #World
The point isnâ€™t to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Regret #Hate
To err is to wander, and wandering is the way we discover the world; and, lost in thought, it is also the way we discover ourselves. Being right might be gratifying, but in the end it is static, a mere statement. Being wrong is hard and humbling, and sometimes even dangerous, but in the end it is a journey, and a story.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Journey #Stories #World
If you want to live a life free of regret, there is an option open to you. It's called a lobotomy.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Motivation #Regret #Inspiration
I can usually find my own way out of whatever dicey literary or linguistic situations I wander into, but I have to work much harder at the science.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Way #Wander #Situation
The kinds of things that we can make mistakes about are essentially unlimited in number.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Mistake #Numbers #Kind
If it is sweet to be right, then - let's not deny it - it is downright savory to point out that someone else is wrong.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Sweet #Deny #Savory
Parading our own brilliance and exulting in other people's errors is not very nice. For that matter, even wanting to parade our own brilliance and exult in other people's errors is not very nice, although it is certainly very human.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Nice #Errors #People
First, philosophy concerns itself with all kinds of issues that don't get much airtime in day-to-day life. What's the nature of reality? Can we ever truly know anything, and if so, how? What does it mean to be a moral agent? And while we're at it, is there any such thing as agency anyway?
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Philosophy #Mean #Reality
A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything: about our political and intellectual convictions, our religious and moral beliefs, our assessments of other people, our memories, our grasp of facts. As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Religious #Memories #Thinking
wrongness always seems to come at us from left field - that is, from outside ourselves. But the reality could hardly be more different. Error is the ultimate inside job. Yes, the world can be profoundly confusing; and yes, other people can mislead or deceive you. In the end, though, nobody but you can choose to believe your own beliefs.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Jobs #Believe #Reality
Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that?
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Thinking #Errors #Intellectual
Take away the ability of an intelligent, principled, hard-working mind to get it wrong, and you take away the whole thing.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Hard Work #Intelligent #Mind
Wow. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Mistake #Wow
We're terrified of not having the answers, and we would sometimes rather assert an incorrect answer than make our peace with the fact that we really don't know.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Answers #Facts #Sometimes
Your own regrets may not be as ugly as you think they are.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Regret #Thinking #Ugly
Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly, it reminds us that we know that we could do better.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Regret #Past
If you Google 'regret and tattoo,' you will get 11.5 million hits.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Tattoo #Regret #Google
Thirty-three percent of all of our regrets pertain to decisions we made about education.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Motivation #Regret #Inspiration
I had drunk our great cultural Kool-Aid about regret, which is that lamenting things that occurred in the past is an absolute waste of time, that we should always look forward and not backward, and that one of the noblest and best things we can do is strive to live a life free of regrets.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Motivation #Regret #Inspiration
The inability to experience regret is one of the diagnostic characteristics of sociopaths.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Motivation #Regret #Inspiration
Our love of being right is best understood as our fear of being wrong
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Our Love #Understood #Being Wrong
If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we donâ€™t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isnâ€™t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having themâ€¦ We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesnâ€™t remind us that we did badly â€” it reminds us that we know we can do better.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Dream #Hurt #Pain
And to me, if you really want to rediscover wonder, you need to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness and look around at each other and look out at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe and be able to say, â€œWow, I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Space #Needs #Looks
We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create, and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesen't remind us what we did badly, it reminds us what we know we could do better.
-- Kathryn Schulz

#Regret #Past #Creating

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