Leonard Mlodinow Quotations

Non-human primates spend hours a day grooming each other. And with humans, touching is also important. It's a way to form bonds and connect in modern society. But you can also speed up the use of conscious purposes once you're aware of that, and it can be manipulated.

If memories were indeed like what a camera records, they could be forgotten, or they could fade so that they are no longer clear and vivid. But it would be difficult to explain how people could have memories that are both clear and vivid while also being wrong. Yet that happens, and it is not infrequent.

On the unconscious level, touch seems to impart a subliminal sense of caring and connection.

Our subliminal mental processes operate outside awareness because they arise in these portions of our mind that are inaccessible to our conscious self; their inaccessibility is due to the architecture of the brain rather than because they have been subject to Freudian motivational forces like repression.

When judging a product, we rarely have exhaustive scientific data to go by. As a result, if we are to form a complete picture, we must fill in the blanks, just as we must in our visual perception.

'Subliminal' is about how we misinterpret our behavior because we're unaware of what our unconscious minds are doing.

I find that predicting the course of our lives is like predicting the weather. You might be able to predict your future in the short term, but the longer you look ahead, the less likely you are to be correct.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

One of the most surprising forms of nonverbal communication is the way we automatically adjust the amount of time we spend looking into another's eyes as a function of our relative social position.

We perceive, we remember our experiences, we make judgments, we act - and in all of these endeavors, we are influenced by factors that we aren't aware of.

Politicians often misuse science for political ends and to pursue their own agenda.

One of the things your unconscious mind does for you - and it's a great gift - is it gives you extra courage to view the outer world and it does that by giving you an extra-special view of yourself.

Social connection is such a basic feature of human experience that when we are deprived of it, we suffer.

The pitch, timbre, volume, speed, and cadence of your voice, the speed with which you speak, and even the way you modulate pitch and loudness, are all hugely influential factors in how convincing you are and how people judge your state of mind and character.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

The truth is that our unconscious minds are active, purposeful, and independent. Hidden they may be, but their effects are anything but, for they play a critical role in shaping the way our conscious minds experience and respond to the world.

One of the ways we interact with other human beings and form social bonds is through touch, and probably most of us are not aware of the extreme importance of touch.

Social rejection doesn't just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being.

Scientists attach great importance to the human capacity for spoken language. But we also have a parallel track of nonverbal communication, which may reveal more than our carefully chosen words, and sometimes be at odds with them.

Intentionality and talent always matter. An extraordinary feat is certainly made more likely by someone's focus, hard work, etc. But chance also matters.

By subliminal, I mean things that occur in our world that are below the threshold of consciousness but do have a psychological effect on us.

The attacks on global warming are no different than the attacks the cigarettes companies used to use to say that cigarettes don't cause cancer.

A failure doesn't mean you are unworthy, nor does it preclude success on the next try.

I think the fun of following the movie box office and stocks is very similar to the fun of sports - all three combine passion and unpredictability.

Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we have evolved a special physical route along which those subliminal feelings of social connection travel from skin to brain.

Of course our feelings matter. But emotional decisions are usually not the best ones. On the other hand, your emotions can affect your decisions whether you like it or not because the effects can occur on the unconscious level.

One thing that feeds into the way you experience the social world is your mood - and one thing that affects your mood is the weather.

I believe there is true expertise in some endeavors, and not in others. There is obviously no such thing as expertise in predicting the results of coin tosses, but there is expertise in predicting the behavior of lasers.

French culture is known for many great attributes, some of which probably have nothing to do with food, wine, and romance.

I always liked movies, so I started writing for Hollywood, but my day job was physics.

Whatever I've worked on, I've always tried to make my writing personal. I think that's what makes my books somewhat different from what other scientists are doing. You have to tie concepts into everyday life, or they just won't be interesting for readers.

Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don't know intimately.

Language is handy, but we humans have social and emotional connections that transcend words and are communicated - and understood - without conscious thought.

People intuitively realize that there is strength in numbers and take comfort in the company of others, especially in times of anxiety or need.

Touch is our most highly developed sense when we are born, and it remains a fundamental mode of communication throughout a baby's first year and an important influence throughout a person's life.

We unwittingly judge products by their boxes, books by their covers, and even corporation's annual reports by their nice glossy finish.

We should keep in mind that it is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios of the future. We should view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism.

We routinely participate in elaborate nonverbal exchanges even when we are not consciously aware of doing so.

Expressive speech, with modulation in pitch and volume, and a minimum of noticeable pauses, boosts credibility and enhances the impression of intelligence.

We all know that players will hit a few more home runs than usual in some years and a few less in others. But the mathematics of chance also predicts that some years they'll hit a lot more, and some years a lot less.

We all know that looks matter. What most of us don't understand is just how much looks matter and how difficult it is for us to ignore a person's appearance when making a social judgment.

We all know that looks matter, and modern politicians have always assumed that their battles are decided on both substance and image.

You have to have passion for a subject to write about it. You can't expect your readers to feel any excitement if it's nothing but a boring writing exercise for you.

We have emotions for a reason; for instance, imagine pain. You have pain so that if you touch something that's hot, or if you slam your hand with a hammer, you will pull your hand away and not do that again.

I've always loved science, as far back as I can remember. I was very, very curious about how everything worked: the world, the physical universe, chemistry, law. So it was only natural to be curious about how our mind works.

People spend a lot of time talking and thinking about how members of the opposite sex look, but very little time paying attention to how they sound. To our unconscious minds, however, voice is very important.

Every aspect of our lives plays out in two versions: one conscious, which we are constantly aware of, and the other unconscious, which remains hidden from us.

Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.

In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of people's character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us - usually spotty - and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive.

I just really loved films and thought I should be writing screenplays.

In physics, all can you do is predict the consequences of physical laws.

I believe in a kind of God. I think all scientists, in a way, believe in a certain God, in a certain order of nature.

We believe that when we choose anything, judge a stranger and even fall in love, we understand the principal factors that influenced us. Very often nothing could be further from the truth. As a result, many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves, and society, are false.

We judge people and initiatives by their results, and we expect events to happen for good, understandable reason. But our clear visions of inevitability are often only illusions.

Research suggests when it comes to understanding our feelings, we humans have an odd mix of low ability and high confidence.

That's why successful people in every field are almost universally members of a certain set - the set of people who don't give up.

What I've learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.

Says Bargh: "We all hold dear idea that we´re the captain of our own sould, and we´re in charge, and it´s a very scary feeling when we are not. In fact, that´s what psychosis is - the feeling of detachment from reality and that you are not in control, and that´s a very frightening feeling for anyone."

Subliminal is about how we misinterpret our behavior because were unaware of what our unconscious minds are doing.

Regression toward the mean. That is, in any series of random events an extraordinary event is most likely to be followed, due purely to chance, by a more ordinary one.

We also use our imagination and take shortcuts to fill gaps in patterns of nonvisual data. As with visual input, we draw conclusions and make judgments based on uncertain and incomplete information, and we conclude, when we are done analyzing the patterns, that out picture is clear and accurate. But is it?

Science has revealed a universe that is vast, ancient, violent, strange, and beautiful, a universe of almost infinite variety and possibility one in which time can end in a black hole, and conscious beings can evolve from a soup of minerals.

One thing that feeds into the way you experience the social world is your mood - and one thing that affects your mood is the weather.

Our inner weighing of evidence is not a careful mathematical calculation resulting in a probabilistic estimate of truth, but more like a whirlpool blending of the objective and the personal. The result is a set of beliefs - both conscious and unconscious - that guide us in interpreting all the events of our lives.

Listeners instinctively detect that when we lower the usual pitch of our voice, we are sad, and when we raise it, we are angry or fearful.

When we are in the grasp of illusion - or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea - instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.