Psychology Funny Quotes

Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much.

Funny the only two times we use the phrase "seeing someone" are when we are referring to being in a a relationship or getting psychological help.

Psychobabble attempts to redefine the entire English language just to make a correct statement incorrect. Psychology is the study of why someone would try to do this.

When pointing out the flaws in others, people always end up talking about themselves.

Does it get heavy?" "Does what get heavy?" "That big head you lug around 24/7, 365." Sally patted Jen on the back. "It just seems like maybe your neck or back would begin to hurt at some point." "Wow, Sally. I'm impressed you aren't just going for a psychology degree! Right now you seem to be running for mayor of 'I think I'm funny' town.

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody.

I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about house cleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman.

I was on a mission. I had to learn to comfort myself, to see what others saw in me and believe it. I needed to discover what the hell made me happy other than being in love. Mission impossible. When did figuring out what makes you happy become work? How had I let myself get to this point, where I had to learn me..? It was embarrassing. In my college psychology class, I had studied theories of adult development and learned that our twenties are for experimenting, exploring different jobs, and discovering what fulfills us. My professor warned against graduate school, asserting, "You're not fully formed yet. You don't know if it's what you really want to do with your life because you haven't tried enough things." Oh, no, not me.." And if you rush into something you're unsure about, you might awake midlife with a crisis on your hands," he had lectured it. Hi. Try waking up a whole lot sooner with a pre-thirty predicament worm dangling from your early bird mouth. "Well to begin," Phone Therapist responded, "you have to learn to take care of yourself. To nurture and comfort that little girl inside you, to realize you are quite capable of relying on yourself. I want you to try to remember what brought you comfort when you were younger." Bowls of cereal after school, coated in a pool of orange-blossom honey. Dragging my finger along the edge of a plate of mashed potatoes. I knew I should have thought "tea" or "bath," but I didn't. Did she want me to answer aloud? "Grilled cheese?" I said hesitantly. "Okay, good. What else?" I thought of marionette shows where I'd held my mother's hand and looked at her after a funny part to see if she was delighted, of brisket sandwiches with ketchup, like my dad ordered. Sliding barn doors, baskets of brown eggs, steamed windows, doubled socks, cupcake paper, and rolled sweater collars. Cookouts where the fathers handled the meat, licking wobbly batter off wire beaters, Christmas ornaments in their boxes, peanut butter on apple slices, the sounds and light beneath an overturned canoe, the pine needle path to the ocean near my mother's house, the crunch of snow beneath my red winter boots, bedtime stories. "My parents," I said. Damn. I felt like she made me say the secret word and just won extra points on the Psychology Game Network. It always comes down to our parents in therapy.

I treat my thoughts like an old person treats their valuables: I cannot for the life of me proceed to throwing them out.

My mother, my psychiatrist and an assortment of sedatives eventually convinced me I was delusional.

I know what you mean. I usually take it out on my older sister. You can lease her for a weekend or something if you need a psychological punching bag. I'll even give you a discount.

Depression is not dramatic, but it is total. It’s sneaky - you almost don’t notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you’re sleeping. It takes little things at first; your appetite, your desire to return phone calls. Then it comes back for the big stuff, like your will to live. Then next thing you know, your legs are filled with sand. The thought of brushing your teeth fills you with dread, it seems like such an impossible task. Suddenly you’re living your life in black and white – nothing is bright, nothing is pretty anymore. Music sounds tinny and distant. Things you found funny seem dull and off-key.

You're FAT - and don't try to sugarcoat it, because you'll just eat that, too.

What would Golan Do? That way I can ask myself before I do anything. Before I take a dump. How would Dr. Golan want me to take this dump? Should I bank it off the side or go straight down the middle? What would be the most psychologically beneficial dump I could take?

Ugly truths are the biggest source of indigestion in humans.

Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn't mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there's no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn't so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don't confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baad,while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool But what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Most people are scumbags. Accept it. Let go. Chill out, douchebags.

Of all funny things, truth is the funniest.

So, if we win, we get a chance to die sooner?' Rhiannon whispers. 'Maybe they're trying a reverse psychology thing.

I stare past her at the inspirational kitten posters. There's one of a soaking-wet kitten climbing out of a toilet with the caption "it could be worse!" "Just tell me whatever it is you're thinking," Mrs. Paulsen says. "Whatever is going through your mind right now." "I hope they didn't actually drop a cat in the toilet to get that picture," I choke out. "...Pardon?" "Nothing. Sorry.

Isn’t it funny how we make rational excuses for being out of alignment? We say, “Well, this ____ and that ____ happened, so it makes perfect sense for me to be feeling like this ____ and wanting to do this ____.” Yet, to this day, I have never met a happy person who adheres to those excuses. In fact, each time I – or anyone else – decide to give in to “rational excuses” that justify feeling bad – it’s interesting that only further suffering is the result. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Sure, we can go there and make choices that dim our lights… and that is fine; there certainly is purpose for it and the contrast gives us lessons to learn… yet if we’re aware of what we are doing and we’re ready to let go of the suffering – then why go there at all? It’s like beating a dead horse. Been there, done that… so why do we keep repeating it? Pain is going to happen; it’s inevitable in this human experience, yet it is often so brief. When we make those excuses, what happens is: we pick up that pain and begin to carry it with us into the next day… and the next day… into next week… maybe next month… and some of us even carry it for years or to our graves! Forgive, let it go! It is NOT worth it! It is NEVER worth it. There is never a good enough reason for us to pick up that pain and carry it with us. There is never a good enough reason for us to be out of alignment with peace. Unforgiveness hurts you; it hurts others, so why even go there? Why even promote pain? Why say painful things to yourself or others? Why think pain? Just let it go! Whenever I look back on painful things or feel pain today, I know it is my EGO that drives me to “go there.” The EGO likes to have the last word, it likes to feel superior, it likes to make others feel less than in hopes that it will make itself (me) feel better about my insecurities. Maybe if I hurt them enough, they will feel the pain I felt over what they did to me. It’s only fair! It’s never my fault; it’s always someone else’s. There is a twisted sense of pleasure I get from feeling this way, and my EGO eats it right up. YET! With awareness that continues to grow and expand each day, I choose to not feed my pain (EGO) or even go there. I still feel it at times, of course, so I simply acknowledge it and then release it. I HAVE power and choice over my speech and actions. I do not need to ever “go there” again. It’s my choice; it’s your choice. So it’s about damn time we start realizing this. We are not victims of our impulses or emotions; we have the power to control them, and so it’s time to stop acting like we don’t. It’s time to relinquish the excuses.

They thought more before nine a.m. than most people thought all month. I remember once declining cherry pie at dinner, and Rand cocked his head and said, 'Ahh! Iconoclast. Disdains the easy, symbolic patriotism.' And when I tried to laugh it off and said, well, I didn't like cherry cobbler either, Marybeth touched Rand's arm: 'Because of the divorce. All those comfort foods, the desserts a family eats together, those are just bad memories for Nick.' It was silly but incredibly sweet, these people spending so much energy trying to figure me out. The answer: I don't like cherries.

SWAT? For me?" Still trembling, one hand clung to the ambulance gurney, the other held a massive sterilised cotton wool wad under my nose. "Tactical Support was busy. You got Dennis and Arlo," said Harry, speed-reading the papers he'd snatched from inside my jacket. Closest his hands had been to my chest in a long time. "Which one broke my nose?" "That'd be Dennis.

What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil...

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can’t listen to because they’ve been “ruined” by bad words — my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh.

People will laugh at anything, except their own moronic self.

Most people are but a fake-art, and as real as a concealed fart.

But the trouble with asking your subconscious what it wants is, it just laughs at you and says, 'Work it out for yourself, moron.

Before you call a spade a spade, dig a big hole for yourself.

The funny thing about games and fictions is that they have a weird way of bleeding into reality. Whatever else it is, the world that humans experience is animated with narratives, rituals, and roles that organize psychological experience, social relations, and our imaginative grasp of the material cosmos. The world, then, is in many ways a webwork of fictions, or, better yet, of stories. The contemporary urge to “gamify” our social and technological interactions is, in this sense, simply an extension of the existing games of subculture, of folklore, even of belief. This is the secret truth of the history of religions: not that religions are “nothing more” than fictions, crafted out of sociobiological need or wielded by evil priests to control ignorant populations, but that human reality possesses an inherently fictional or fantastic dimension whose “game engine” can — and will — be organized along variously visionary, banal, and sinister lines. Part of our obsession with counterfactual genres like sci-fi or fantasy is not that they offer escape from reality — most of these genres are glum or dystopian a lot of the time anyway — but because, in reflecting the “as if” character of the world, they are actually realer than they appear.

Bullying is about judging. It’s about establishing who is more worthy or important. The more powerful kids judge the less powerful kids. They judge them to be less valuable human beings, and they rub their faces in it on a daily basis. Like the boys in Sheri Levy’s study, they get a boost in self-esteem. It’s not that bullies are low in self-esteem, but judging and demanding others can give them a self-esteeem rush. Bullies also gain social status from their actions. Others may look up to them and judge them to be cool, powerful, or funny. Or may fear them. Either way, they’ve upped their standing.

Apparently, we're all in the frame," I heard Harry murmur somewhere behind me. And I whirled back to him. Innate, irrational anger surged. Then stopped, dead - as I suddenly took in Handsome, Robert and Doc. They were all staring at me. They were concentrating, all resolute, all a tad furrow-browed… upon my face. Self-consciousness burgeoned. I gingerly fingered my and lips and my chin, "Am I drooling?" "Your arse is hanging out," said Harry, not looking up from the forensics he was scanning. And so it was. Handsome, Robert and Doc averted their eyes as I, wishing I'd merely been dribbling, grabbed the back flaps of my breezy hospital gown, fully placed my back against the wall. Then, thinking better of it, dived hurriedly, carefully, back into bed. If Chinese Lady'd been here, she could've, would've, told me. I missed her already.

When I argue with devout statists, sometimes other voluntaryists tell me that I'm wasting my time, opining that a particular statist is never going to "get it." I often respond by saying that that's rarely my intention. Most of the time, when I argue with statists, the goal is for ME to learn more about the mentality and psychology of authoritarian indoctrination, and to hopefully help any SPECTATORS--whether statist or anarchist--learn something from the exchange. (Both of those goals can be achieved even if the statist continues to be a lunk-headed dupe.) Earlier today, a funny but possibly profound analogy came to mind about this: When I argue with "true believer" devout statists, I'm not being a doctor trying to heal an ailing patient; I'm being a coroner, doing an AUTOPSY on a patient who is already beyond any hope of saving, in the hopes that I, and anyone observing, may learn more about the "disease" of statism, in order to better understand the nature of it, and possibly prevent others from experiencing a similar fate.

All I have is me, myself and I and we are all getting really tired of each other.

Checked thoroughly, humans stink.

Sometimes it's better to beat a dead horse than to worry about whether or not it might recover.

The hummingbird realized that this was a psychological tightrope that he had to navigate carefully, so he did it sideways because this was the only way he could move when perched

It's funny the things we do even though no one is watching

To really know a person criticize his god. And he'll show you who he is not.

If your god is more screwed up than you, then, by Jove, how cuckoo must be you!

If there was a chink in 'Putumee's psychological armour it was in the vicinity of his ego.

You are hereby warned that any movement on your part not explicitly endorsed by verbal authorization on my part may pose a direct physical risk to you, as well as consequential psychological and possibly, depending on your personal belief system, spiritual risks ensuing from your personal reaction to said physical risk. Any movement on your part constitutes an implicit and irrevocable acceptance of such risk," the first MetaCop says. There is a little speaker on his belt, simultaneously translating all of this into Spanish and Japanese. "Or as we used to say," the other MetaCop says, "freeze, sucker!" "Under provisions of The Mews at Windsor Heights Code, we are authorized to enforce law, national security concerns, and societal harmony on said territory also. A treaty between The Mews at Windsor Heights and White Columns authorizes us to place you in temporary custody until your status as an Investigatory Focus has been resolved." "Your ass is busted," the second MetaCop says. "As your demeanor has been nonaggressive and you carry no visible weapons, we are not authorized to employ heroic measures to ensure your cooperation," the first MetaCop says. "You stay cool and we'll stay cool," the second MetaCop says. "However, we are equipped with devices, including but not limited to projectile weapons, which, if used, may pose an extreme and immediate threat to your health and well-being." "Make one funny move and we'll blow your head off," the second MetaCop says.

In 1966, after arriving in New York, I read two of Luria's books, Higher Cortical Functions in Man and Human Brain and Psychological Processes. The latter, which contained very full case histories of patients with frontal lobe damage, filled me with admiration [4]. [Footnote 4]. And fear, for as I read it, I thought, what place is there for me in the world? Luria has already seen, said, written, and thought anything I can ever say, or write, or think. I was so upset that I tore the book in two (I had to buy a new copy for the library, as well as a copy for myself).

When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream. A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy. I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened.

All right, she thought I was a funny little geezer, but my charred Phaethon had impressed her, I was very obviously available, and she was out for revenge. What makes Greek tragedies great is that this brand of psychological nonsense doesn't enter into it at all. I had wanted to tell her that too, but unfortunately conversations consist for the most part of things one does not say. We are descendents, we do not have mythical lives, but psychological ones. And we know everything, we are always our own chorus.

For now, the Simple Daily Practice means doing ONE thing every day. Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.

Les psychiatres, c'est très efficace. Moi, avant, je pissais au lit, j'avais honte. Je suis allé voir un psychiatre, je suis guéri. Maintenant, je pisse au lit, mais j'en suis fier. Psychiatrists are very efficient. Before, I used to wet the bed. I went to see a psychiatrist, and was cured. Now, when I wet the bed, I'm proud of it.

There was a great joke that was forever doing the rounds in the jail and it was probably funny not because it had a humorous punchline but because it was so very true at a deep psychological level. Put anyone in that jail and soon enough they'd actually become a cruel, twisted, sadistic and heartless thug. And some of the prisoners were just as bad.

So there in that dim room, with only the light of a little lamp near my pillow, I burrowed under my covers and began to read. My hope was that the book would be boring enough that I would fall right asleep. But a funny thing happened. An hour later, I was totally absorbed in it. Sure, there were some passages where the writing was difficult, but the subject of the book was human psychology, which is universal.

From the point of view of an inhabitant of the Old World, marsupials are exceedingly odd. But oddity is not the same as randomness. Kangaroos and wallabies may lack verisimilitude; but their improbability repeats itself and obeys recognizable laws. The same is true of the psychological creatures inhabiting the remoter regions of our minds. The experiences encountered under the influence of mescalin or deep hypnosis are certainly strange; but they are strange with a certain regularity, strange according to a pattern.

Recent advances in experimental psychology and neuroimaging have allowed us to study the boundary between conscious and unconscious mental processes with increasing precision. We now know that at least two systems in the brain—often referred to as “dual processes”—govern human cognition, emotion, and behavior. One is evolutionarily older, unconscious, and automatic; the other evolved more recently and is both conscious and deliberative. When you find another person annoying, sexually attractive, or inadvertently funny, you are experiencing the percolations of System 1. The heroic efforts you make to conceal these feelings out of politeness are the work of System 2.

Even as we start to register the tremors of imaginal perception, we may face a concurrent barrage of disdain, disbelief, and even outright hostility from our usual reasoned rootedness in the five senses. As the subtle senses develop, and we start to actually see energy fields or feel the edges blur between our body and the person next to us, we may conclude we are exhausted, have eaten bad food, are becoming ill, or must be falling in love. We call these subtle openings "chemistry," a funny feeling, the flu, or a waking dream. On the other hand, if we can suspend our disbelief in invisibles long enough, we may find ourselves roaming in imaginal fields for longer and longer periods of time.

But unfortunately you get no further by merely wishing class-distinctions away. More exactly, it is necessary to wish them away, but your wish has no efficacy unless you grasp what it involves. The fact that has got to be faced is that to abolish class-distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. Here am I, a typical member of the middle class. It is easy for me to say that I want to get rid of class-distinctions, but nearly everything I think and do is a result of class-distinctions. All my notions –notions of good and evil, of pleasant and unpleasant, of funny and serious, of ugly and beautiful–are essentially middle-class notions; my taste in books and food and clothes, my sense of honour, my table manners, my turns of speech, my accent, even the characteristic movements of my body, are the products of a special kind of upbringing and a special niche about half-way up the social hierarchy.

I hear you're quite the writer. Quite the teacher's pet." "I... I don't know what you mean." "No? Then maybe you're in for a surprise. And maybe it won't be a nice one." Kate heard her voice lashing out, braver than she felt. "I don't know what you're talking about. But nothing that pertains to me is any of your business.' The match hissed again. She saw his black, black eyes flickering. "You're right. How inconsiderate of me." Shaken, Kate willed her feet to move her forward. "You should be more careful," Pearce said. "Anyone could find your key. Anyone could get into your cabin." Kate whirled to face him. "I have a roommate. I'm not alone." "A roommate?" And he sounded like he was smiling... a dark strange smile as if she'd said something particularly funny. "If someone wanted to get you," Pearce said slowly, and another match went out, "a roommate wouldn't stop them. They'd just get you. Wouldn't they?

It is necessary to have metaphysical ideas-we cannot do without them-but it is also necessary to submit them very seriously to the test whether they agree with the human being: a good metaphysical idea does not spoil one's stomach. For instance, if I hold a metaphysical conviction that we live on after death for fifty thousand years instead of fifty million-if that is a solution-! try what it means if I believe in fifty thousand years only; perhaps that is good for my digestion-or bad. You see, I have no other criterion. Of course, it sounds funny, but I start from the conviction that man has also a living body and if something is true for one side, it must be true for the other. For what is the body? The body is merely the visibility of the soul, the psyche; and the soul is the psychological experience of the body. So it is really one and the same thing. Therefore, a good truth must be true for the whole system, not only for half of it. According to my imagination, something seems to be good-it f-its in with my imagination-but it proves to be entirely wrong for my body. And something might apparently be quite nice for the body, but it is very bad for the experience of the soul, and in that case I have a metaphysical enteritis. So I must be careful to bring the two systems together; the only criterion is that both are balanced. When life flows, then I can say it is probably all right, but if I get upset I know something must be wrong, out of order at least. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 355).

Still, the appeal of regressive ideas is perennial, and the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress always has to be made. When we fail to acknowledge our hard-won progress, we may come to believe that perfect order and universal prosperity are the natural state of affairs, and that every problem is an outrage that calls for blaming evildoers, wrecking institutions, and empowering a leader who will restore the country to its rightful greatness. I have made my own best case for progress and the ideals that made it possible, and have dropped hints on how journalists, intellectuals, and other thoughtful people (including the readers of this book) might avoid contributing to the widespread heedlessness of the gifts of the Enlightenment. Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn’t mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there’s no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn’t so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don’t confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baaad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool. But what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

While writing the article that reported these findings, Amos and I discovered that we enjoyed working together. Amos was always very funny, and in his presence I became funny as well, so we spent hours of solid work in continuous amusement. The pleasure we found in working together made us exceptionally patient; it is much easier to strive for perfection when you are never bored. Perhaps most important, we checked our critical weapons at the door. Both Amos and I were critical and argumentative, he even more than I, but during the years of our collaboration neither of us ever rejected out of hand anything the other said. Indeed, one of the great joys I found in the collaboration was that Amos frequently saw the point of my vague ideas much more clearly than I did. Amos was the more logical thinker, with an orientation to theory and an unfailing sense of direction. I was more intuitive and rooted in the psychology of perception, from which we borrowed many ideas. We were sufficiently similar to understand each other easily, and sufficiently different to surprise each other. We developed a routine in which we spent much of our working days together, often on long walks. For the next fourteen years our collaboration was the focus of our lives, and the work we did together during those years was the best either of us ever did. We quickly adopted a practice that we maintained for many years. Our research was a conversation, in which we invented questions and jointly examined our intuitive answers. Each question was a small experiment, and we carried out many experiments in a single day. We were not seriously looking for the correct answer to the statistical questions we posed. Our aim was to identify and analyze the intuitive answer, the first one that came to mind, the one we were tempted to make even when we knew it to be wrong. We believed—correctly, as it happened—that any intuition that the two of us shared would be shared by many other people as well, and that it would be easy to demonstrate its effects on judgments.

Try any one of these things each day: A) Sleep eight hours. B) Eat two meals instead of three. C) No TV. D) No junk food. E) No complaining for one whole day. F) No gossip. G) Return an e-mail from five years ago. H) Express thanks to a friend. I) Watch a funny movie or a stand-up comic. J) Write down a list of ideas. The ideas can be about anything. K) Read a spiritual text. Any one that is inspirational to you. The Bible, The Tao te Ching, anything you want. L) Say to yourself when you wake up, “I’m going to save a life today.” Keep an eye out for that life you can save. M) Take up a hobby. Don’t say you don’t have time. Learn the piano. Take chess lessons. Do stand-up comedy. Write a novel. Do something that takes you out of your current rhythm. N) Write down your entire schedule. The schedule you do every day. Cross out one item and don’t do that anymore. O) Surprise someone. P) Think of ten people you are grateful for. Q) Forgive someone. You don’t have to tell them. Just write it down on a piece of paper and burn the paper. It turns out this has the same effect in terms of releasing oxytocin in the brain as actually forgiving them in person. R) Take the stairs instead of the elevator. S) I’m going to steal this next one from the 1970s pop psychology book Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No: when you find yourself thinking of that special someone who is causing you grief, think very quietly, “No.” If you think of him and (or?) her again, think loudly, “No!” Again? Whisper, “No!” Again, say it. Louder. Yell it. Louder. And so on. T) Tell someone every day that you love them. U) Don’t have sex with someone you don’t love. V) Shower. Scrub. Clean the toxins off your body. W) Read a chapter in a biography about someone who is an inspiration to you. X) Make plans to spend time with a friend. Y) If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares. You know the ones I’m talking about. Z) Deep breathing. When the vagus nerve is inflamed, your breathing becomes shallower. Your breath becomes quick. It’s fight-or-flight time! You are panicking. Stop it! Breathe deep. Let me tell you something: most people think “yoga” is all those exercises where people are standing upside down and doing weird things. In the Yoga Sutras, written in 300 B.C., there are 196 lines divided into four chapters. In all those lines, ONLY THREE OF THEM refer to physical exercise. It basically reads, “Be able to sit up straight.” That’s it. That’s the only reference in the Yoga Sutras to physical exercise. Claudia always tells me that yogis measure their lives in breaths, not years. Deep breathing is what keeps those breaths going.

A psychological phenomenon known as the escalation of commitment has been shown to make our brains do all sorts of funny things. The power of commitment makes some people play video games until they keel over and die.[c] It is used to influence people to give more to charity.[ci] It has even been used to coerce prisoners of war into switching allegiances.[cii] The commitments we make have a powerful effect on us and play an important role in the things we do, the products we buy, and the habits we form.

People are either silly asses, or ass*oles. Mostly, just silly ass*oles. Choose! Hard place, or hell hole!

Believe you me, I love all - just not people.

Humans as a whole are but an unwholesome hole with a sorry ass. In short, a**holes.

Humans, left to own misguided devices, scratches the Divine in the self as one would the lice, but remember to lick well all the vices.

Of course, the ways we carry dysfunction through our family lineage are not so funny. To break the chain, I must pause to ask myself: What dysfunctional behaviors do I practice by habits that come from my own subconscious psychological patterning because of my upbringing? Emotional patterns and ways of being are handed down from generation to generation like family heirlooms—and while many may be positive, many can also be oppressive.

Humor is more than entertainment or joke telling—it’s a powerful social lubricant that eases and enriches communication, interpersonal relations, and education. Humor is a universal speech opener because it immediately earns the speaker respectful attention. It’s psychologically impossible to hate someone with whom you’ve laughed. When we laugh, we temporarily give ourselves over to the person who makes us laugh. —Robert Orben

Driving on the freeway scared me for a long time. In fact, I was completely incapable of it. I'd take the smaller roads where, weirdly, I felt more comfortable. I talked a lot about it to the shrink because I didn't understand why I was so afraid, and also because it was a real handicap for work and life in general. And it's one of the few subjects about which he deigned to tell me his opinion... He told me that, if you really thought about it, a car had many points with a coffin... that accelerating to unnatural speeds on a road where you know nothing of the people piloting the other coffins made you think... and that, under these conditions, it seemed to him fairly legitimate to be afraid. Since the, I've not been afraid anymore. Psychoanalysis is funny...

Every villainess is the heroine in the story she tells.

The issue is so important to us that it is almost funny. A colleague told me about this informal social psychological experiment: A new baby was left in a park with an attendant who, when asked by passersby, would claim to have agreed to sit with the child for a few moments and did not know if it was a boy or girl. Everyone stopping to admire the infant was quite distressed at not being able to know the child’s gender. Some even offered to undress the child to find out. Other studies explain why gender matters so much: people tend to treat baby boys and girls quite differently.

What do psychology professors say when they pass each other in the hallway? “Hi, you’re fine, how am I?” I know, I know. The joke isn’t that funny.

People are funny. The longer you are around them, the more you start to realize that everyone makes the same motions over and over again. We all want to believe that every day is different, that every day we change, but really, it seems that certain things are coded into us from the very beginning

paces. ‘She can’t do that.’ ‘She can and she is. She’s renting a cottage. I don’t know how long for.’ She takes hold of my wrist and grips it so tightly that her nails pierce my skin. ‘I have to stop her.’ ‘Monica! You need to keep this in perspective!’ I extract my wrist from her fingers and shake her gently. ‘I know she brings back memories of your parents and I know that hurts, but now, in the present, you have nothing to fear from Orla.’ Her eyes say otherwise and as she looks into mine I see that she is close to telling me something. ‘What is it, Monica? What is it?’ My scalp tingles. ‘Is it about Rose?’ Her eyes glaze over. ‘I was warned about this. I was warned—’ ‘What are you talking about? Warned by whom?’ ‘Grace!’ she hisses. ‘Do you have any idea how much damage she could do?’ I give a short laugh, not because it’s funny but because I have to let some emotion out. ‘The status quo should never be underestimated. Life, ticking along. It might seem boring at times but . . .’ She looks up to the right and seems to pluck her words from the air. ‘Orla is dangerous. She will cause havoc and then she will leave. We have to stop her.’ ‘Believe me, I don’t want her around either.’ I take her hand. ‘Tell me what’s troubling you.’ ‘I can’t.’ She pulls free. ‘I can’t break a confidence.’ She takes a few steps backward. ‘Can you find out what Orla wants? Can you do that?’ I already have. ‘I’ll do my best.’ I try to look optimistic. ‘I’ll let you know.’ ‘Good.’ She recovers her composure and gives me an awkward hug. ‘I may not have been popular at school, my home life was in meltdown, but hey!’ She looks around her, takes

Don't you ever think that maybe the reason behind why heroes are so dedicated to saving people is because they want to finish them off in the end? I mean, in that case, the villains should be the heroes and the heroes should be the villains so that the hero-villains won't be mistaken with the villain-heroes and the villains can be friends with the heroes. And the entire villain-hero and hero-villain world can be one big happy family. With me stuck in the middle.

But unfortunately you get no further by merely wishing class-distinctions away. More exactly, it is necessary to wish them away, but your wish has no efficacy unless you grasp what it involves. The fact that has got to be faced is that to abolish class-distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. Here am I, a typical member of the middle class. It is easy for me to say that I want to get rid of class-distinctions, but nearly everything I think and do is a result of class-distinctions. All my notions –notions of good and evil, of pleasant and unpleasant, of funny and serious, of ugly and beautiful–are essentially middle-class notions; my taste in books and food and clothes, my sense of honour, my table manners, my turns of speech, my accent, even the characteristic movements of my body, are the products of a special kind of upbringing and a special niche about half-way up the social hierarchy.

Were I but perfectly normal, I would just not be.

leaders.’ Nebe snorted and went back round his desk. ‘You’re going to have to watch your mouth, Bernie,’ he said, half-amused. ‘Get to the funny bit.’ ‘Well, it’s this. A number of recent reports, complaints if you like, made to Kripo by those related to institutionalized people leads me to suspect that some sort of mercy-killing is already being unofficially practised.’ I leant forward and grasped the bridge of my nose. ‘Do you ever get headaches? I get headaches. It’s smell that really sets them off. Paint smells pretty bad. So does formaldehyde in the mortuary. But the worst are those rotten pissing places you get where the dozers and rum-sweats sleep rough. That’s a smell I can recall in my worst nightmares. You know, Arthur, I thought I knew every bad smell there was in this city. But that’s last month’s shit fried with last year’s eggs.’ Nebe pulled open a drawer and took out a bottle and two glasses. He said nothing as he poured a couple of large ones. I threw it back and waited for the fiery spirit to seek out what was left of my heart and stomach. I nodded and let him pour me another. I said: ‘Just when you thought that things couldn’t get any worse, you find out that they’ve always been a lot worse than you thought they were. And then they get worse.’ I drained the second glass and then surveyed its empty shape. ‘Thanks for telling me straight, Arthur.’ I dragged myself to my feet. ‘And thanks for the warmer.’ ‘Please keep me informed about your suspect,’ he said. ‘You might consider letting a couple of your men work a friend-and-foe shift on him. No rough stuff, just a bit of the old-fashioned psychological pressure. You know the sort of thing I mean. Incidentally, how are you getting on with your team? Everything working out there? No resentments, or anything like that?’ I could have sat down again and given him a list of

Tesco at the best of times is soulless – but it’s so much worse at 6 in the morning. It’s not as empty as I thought it would be. Who the fuck shops at 6 a.m.? e florescent lights flicker. e shelf upon shelf of coloured cans make my eyes go funny. Everything is hard and shiny and there’s so much fucking choice. Why do I have to choose from thirty kinds of granola? Do I want Country Crunch or Rude Health? Raisins and almonds or tropical? Goji berries and chia seeds or Strawberry Surprise? I’ll just buy the Tesco range – that’ll be easiest. No, wait, there’s Tesco finest*, Tesco Everyday Value and Tesco Free From. What can be so damn fine about granola? You eat it everyday and what could it be free from? It hasn’t got anything unhealthy in it! What could one possibly take out? Actually, we don’t need any fucking granola.

When one begins to appreciate the roles of unconscious suggestibility and self-fulfilling prophecies in human life, this song seems as funny as the latest radioactive fall-out figures.

Physics joined linguistics, mathematics and psychology in this metaprogramming hall of mirrors when Schrödinger demonstrated that quantum events are not "objective” in the Newtonian sense. For fifty years since then, physicists have been struggling to build a system that will get them out of this Strange Loop. The results have been as funny as a Zen koan.

Bullying is about judging. It’s about establishing who is more worthy or important. The more powerful kids judge the less powerful kids. They judge them to be less valuable human beings, and they rub their faces in it on a daily basis. And it’s clear what the bullies get out of it. Like the boys in Sheri Levy’s study, they get a boost in self-esteem. It’s not that bullies are low in self-esteem, but judging and demeaning others can give them a self-esteem rush. Bullies also gain social status from their actions. Others may look up to them and judge them to be cool, powerful, or funny. Or may fear them. Either way, they’ve upped their standing. There’s a big dose of fixed-mindset thinking in the bullies: Some people are superior and some are inferior. And the bullies are the judges. Eric Harris, one of the Columbine shooters, was their perfect target. He had a chest deformity, he was short, he was a computer geek, and he was an outsider, not from Colorado. They judged him mercilessly. When we hear about acts of school violence, we usually think it’s only bad kids from bad homes who could ever take matters into their own hands. But it’s startling how quickly average, everyday kids with a fixed mindset think about violent revenge. In our study, the students with the growth mindset were not as prone to see the bullying as a reflection of who they were. Instead, they saw it as a psychological problem of the bullies, a way for the bullies to gain status or charge their self-esteem: “I’d think that the reason he is bothering me is probably that he has problems at home or at school with his grades.” Or “They need to get a life—not just feel good if they make me feel bad.” Their plan was often designed to educate the bullies: “I would really actually talk to them. I would ask them questions (why are they saying all of these things and why are they doing all of this to me).” Or “Confront the person and discuss the issue; I would feel like trying to help them see they are not funny.” The students with the growth mindset also strongly agreed that: “I would want to forgive them eventually” and “My number one goal would be to help them become better people.

Laughter comes from not crying.

In a foreign language, a lot of social and psychological conditioning gets thrown out the window. First, you begin to interact with people who do not know you outside of the target language. The blank canvas effect here is true of any new people you meet, in general. Second, every language is a world unto itself. It is common to hear people comment on the particularity of an individual’s foreign language skills. “She speaks French well. His Spanish is formal or funny. I want to hear them speak Arabic.” In other words, people expect there to be some differences between the native-language version of yourself and the target-language version. If you want to exaggerate these differences, then more power to you. As the saying in the intro goes, the multiple personalities effect with people who speak more than one language is real but bears none of the oft associated pathology.

But her words may have physically reached Todd’s ears, but psychologically they could not stick the landing and fairly soon the local police tore after the suspected criminal in a pointed arrow manner, the latter of whom performed all sorts of leaps and spins to escape arrest, but it was no use, being bowled over and struck down by the pursuers, and he wound up in a gutter and his clumsy gymnastics came to a halt in a 0-10 split.

Everyone says there’s a voice in your head that serves as your conscience. Well, I’ve had lots of time to think about this, and I have my own psychological theory: Everybody has a tiny person in their head. Stay with me. Don’t laugh. This “Tiny Person” talks to itself, which would explain the voices we hear, but it makes its own decisions. People are merely drones controlled by them.

We have a funny relationship with pleasure. We talk about simple pleasures or guilty pleasures, it's 'business or pleasure', but never the two together, and I've noticed that when we have a choice between pleasure or pain, we seem to think there's a worthiness in choosing pain.

People as a whole are shamsters. Grasp it well. And be well. Then, knowing fully well so, covering your butt, go on in life as if they are not. This is the only way to save your butt. Of course, you can always go live elsewhere. Like the Everest.

All men, at some level or the other, are liars. Fortunately there is a cure. They can all become a fine creature, provided their nuts are taken off with pliers.

Dogs are good people, humans are bad dogs.

Much of this book is funny. That’s because I think much that goes on between teenagers and their parents is funny—if we can step back far enough from our lives to view our daily travails for what they are, instead of as deadly serious issues. Finally, if this book achieves its goal, you may notice a strange transformation in those scenes that used to drag you down. With a new understanding of your teenager’s psychological development and state of mind, you may find that those scenes are never quite the same again. They look different, less desperate, more like the inevitable interaction between a normally developing teenager and a caring parent. You may also discover that, seeing differently, you act differently as well.

Psychoanalysts learn a great deal about patients by listening to their humor. And you can learn a great deal about your own psychological makeup by constantly asking yourself (and answering truthfully), Why did I laugh at this joke and not at others?

If your believed in and imagined god or beloved self-proclaimed messiah behaves like a scoundrel, in all probability, my pal up in the sky says, you too are one such mongrel.

Humans for most part are boorish, boastful, and beasts. They're pretentious, piss-full, pussy-led and penis-full as their priests.

Similarly, ancient history is more psychologically remote than recent history. In an episode of South Park, the characters joke about whether enough time has passed for AIDS to be considered funny.46 Or as Carol Burnett said, “Comedy is tragedy plus time.

If your believed-in god is patently more stupid than you, and you're yet following this buffoon; you're as silly, and an idiot too.

Yeah, yeah, I know you take pride in who you are. However, do not pass away without getting What Is. Or you'll die as you are - dumb, as a religious nut. Of course, you may prefer to stay as you are. In that case, best of luck.

I never lie to myself. If at times I'm an asshole, then, I admit to myself I've been so. This is how brutally truthful I am with myself. Only those who're assholes lie to themselves. Therefore, I am who I am - just a human. But of course, with an ass hole.

Really, you're not to blame. It is such a shame that your imaginary pal, your god is but a hateful, intolerant, misogynistic sod, akin the vilest of humans. So, per se it is not your fault. You're just a simple fellow following a distasteful simpleton. You're just being Him.

People did not choose between things. They chose between descriptions of things. Economists, and anyone else who wanted to believe that human beings were rational, could rationalize, or try to rationalize, loss aversion. But how did you rationalize this? Economists assumed that you could simply measure what people wanted from what they chose. But what if what you want changes with the context in which the options are offered to you? “It was a funny point to make because the point within psychology would have been banal,” the psychologist Richard Nisbett later said. “Of course we are affected by how the decision is presented!