This is the most important joke I've ever heard. Niels Bohr, the founder of Quantum Physics, had a friend to dinner. As the friend left, he noticed a horseshoe nailed above Bohr's front door. He said to Bohr, accusingly, "Niels, you're a great scientist. You can't believe in superstitions." Bohr answered, "I don't, but apparently it works anyway."As with confirmation bias, we tend to lean toward superstitions that benefit us.

John Cleese

Categorized in : Believe Important Physics

Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating.

John Cleese

creativity writing way

Nothing will stop you being creative more effectively as the fear of making a mistake.

John Cleese

music creative mistake

A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.

John Cleese

laughter kind people

Creativity is not the possession of some special talent.

John Cleese

creativity special play

If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?

John Cleese

meat animal funny

No hope for planet at all. But I will be gone before the planet is gone, so it's your problem.

John Cleese

planets problem gone

There are 3 basic differences between we British and you Americans. One, we speak English, and you don't. Two, when we have a "World Championship", we invite teams from other nations. Three, when you meet the British head of State, you only have to get down on one knee.

John Cleese

differences team two

The World is insane. With tiny spots of sanity, here and there... Not the other way around!

John Cleese

here-and-there insane world

He who laughs most, learns best.

John Cleese

learning teacher inspirational

I can do anything I want, I'm eccentric!

John Cleese

rat-race eccentric want

When you get to my age, and I'm 66 now, you realize that the world is a madhouse and that most people are operating in fantasy anyway. So once you realise that, it doesn't bother you much.

John Cleese

age people world

The most creative people have learned to tolerate the slight discomfort of indecision for much longer and so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.

John Cleese

choices creative people

Technology frightens me to death. It's designed by engineers to impress other engineers, and they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers - which is why almost no technology ever works.

John Cleese

impress technology instruction

Political correctness is a bit like a granny, a maiden aunt arriving at a party when everyone's having a good time. And she comes in, they all start sort of buttoning up and becoming self-conscious and behaving properly and then when she leaves, you can have fun again.

John Cleese

aunt party fun

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'

John Cleese

asking would-be life

Ask yourself, "When does this decision have to be taken?" and having answered it, defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time.

John Cleese

taken giving order

This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.

John Cleese

creativity mind friendly

The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.

John Cleese

christmas swim father

Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.

John Cleese

important littles thinking

If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.

John Cleese

alternatives preparation moments