Quotes by Israeli Authors - Page 2

Jesper: “If Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”Kaz: “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”Matthias: “My ghost won’t associate with your ghost.
Leigh Bardugo
The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.
Daniel Kahneman
How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist.
Yuval Noah Harari
Though Moltke was working with subordinates who were totally lacking in comprehension for whatever strategic plans he may have entertained and who on occasion abused the independence granted them, those plans were sufficiently flexible to accommodate errors; that is, a large safety margin was left to ensure that mistakes would not develop into catastrophes.
Martin van Creveld
When a child hits a child, we call it aggression.When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility.When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault.When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline.
Haim G. Ginott
...hope nourishes while loss empties a person out," he said.... "Lila, my love, my love,...lay down your weapons. Don't punish us because I told myself a different story than the one you told yourself.
Anat Talshir
Why can a Grisha possess but one amplifier? I will answer this question instead: What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.
Leigh Bardugo
It is my assertion, however, that the project of remaking humanity and defining identity has been at the core of this century, and that much of this project was characterized by a tremendous destructive urge followed by a long and as yet uncompleted process of coming to terms with the disasters it has produced and is still producing in many parts of the world.
Omer Bartov
We can't help the way we're born. We can't help what we are, only what life we choose to make for ourselves.
Leigh Bardugo
Deeply entrenched fantasies and persistent, most cherished illusions can at least partly be explained as ‘bugs’ or ‘viruses’ in, or ‘mis-activations’ of, our sophisticated and highly sensitive intellectual software, which is driven but also easily disrupted by, and addicted to, our restless and insatiable need for meaning, order, control, and reassurance.
Azar Gat
Papa used to say that wealth is a sin and poverty is a punishment but that God apparently wants there to be no connection between the sin and the punishment. One man sins and another is punished. That's how the world is made.
Amos Oz
She’d shown him in a thousand ways that she was honorable and strong and generous and very human, maybe even more vividly human than anyone he’d ever known. And if she was, then Grisha weren’t inherently evil. They were like anyone else—full of the potential to do great good, and also great harm. To ignore that would make Matthias the monster.
Leigh Bardugo
… that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders with one another, bully, joke, condescend, feel each other, lay a hand on a shoulder or an arm round a waist, to chat and argue with little nudges, to spy a little, sniff out what is cooking in other pots, flatter, disagree, collude, be right, take offence, apologise, make amends, avoid each other, and seek each other’s company again.
Amos Oz
We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor
Benjamin Netanyahu
In that instant, Gogolov feared death. He could feel himself falling through the dark void of space. He was flailing and terrified and utterly alone. He braced for impact, but it never came. He cried for mercy he would never see. He felt the searing heat and the demons ripping at his eyes and face with claws like razors. And then, in a terrifying flash of clarity, he realized it would never end.
Joel C. Rosenberg
The brain's transmutation begins when consciousness understands that it made everything up – morality, good and bad, redemption and the truth. With this understanding, it realizes that now it can start anew.
Shai Tubali
You cannot make this kind of decision," he said. "Go off with someone you barely know. You're seventeen.""And you're the guy who got drunk on eggnog last Christmas and danced to 'Turn The Beat Around' in Aunt Rachel's wig, so stop acting like you're in charge.""We agreed not to mention that ever again," Jason whispered furiously.
Leigh Bardugo
For one crazy moment he had the notion of a vanished tribe of librarians, lost in the deep underground caverns of the Bodleian, a wild and savage tribe that fed on unwary travellers.
Lavie Tidhar
To summarize, using money to motivate people can be a double-edged sword. For tasks that require cognitive ability, low to moderate performance-based incentives can help. But when the incentive level is very high, it can command too much attention and thereby distract the person’s mind with thoughts about the reward. This can create stress and ultimately reduce the level of performance.
Dan Ariely
Are we not, all of us, in some way, damaged mirrors? Are we not constantly engaged in focusing the light of thought—memories out of the depths of human experience—onto the photographic plate of each moment? The image captured in this instant is a snapshot of all eternity, subtly altered by our own brokenness. And who’s to say that the image formed by a damaged mirror is not a truer picture of the universe?
Yael Shahar
Isn't that the only way to curate a life? To live among things that make you gasp with delight?
Maira Kalman
The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
Martin Buber
The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact.
Yuval Noah Harari
People who make use of all their senses in trying times are no less patriotic than those whose restraint is lost, whose senses are dimmed and whose brains are washed. This is also the time for the patriot to say: Enough.
Gideon Levy
If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness, but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.
Yuval Noah Harari
Even if dogma has a purpose, it can never function as a substitute for faith, only as a dry aspect of it.
Nathan Lopes Cardozo
The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism, more powerful than New Year resolutions to improve one's decision making at work and at home.
Daniel Kahneman
Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either
Golda Meir
Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!
Golda Meir
Just as a warrior must anticipate his enemy’s behavior and reactions and understand the dangers, and just as a hunter must know the behavior patterns of animals that he hunts, in order for us to heal, to achieve and maintain a state of mental and physical health,we must be in touch with our body and be aware of the symptoms of illness. Our ability to heal, and the healing process itself, should never be taken for granted. Vanity often keeps us from accepting that we’ll all inevitably face cycles of being weaker and stronger,sicker and healthier.
Ori Hofmekler
As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.
Yuval Noah Harari
Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.
Golda Meir
It seems then that instead of consumers' willingness to pay influencing market prices, the causality is somewhat reversed and it is market prices themselves that influence consumers' willingness to pay.
Dan Ariely
and suddenly I am washed over by a wave of happiness for it, for my little story, because it is a place, a home even, and I can go back to it from wherever I am
David Grossman
Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.tThese findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.
Daniel Kahneman
Memory is dynamic, it's alive.
Ari Folman
The test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact.
Daniel Kahneman
If we start to think about trust as a public good (like clean air and water), we see that we can all benefit from higher levels of trust in terms of communicating with others, making financial transitions smoother, simplifying contracts, and many other business and social activities. Without constant suspicion, we can get more out of our exchanges with others while spending less time making sure that others will fulfill their promises to us. Yet as the tragedy of commons exemplifies, in the short term it is beneficial for each individual to violate and take advantage of the established trust.I suspect that most people and companies miss or ignore the fact that trust is an important public resource and that losing it can have long-term negative consequences for everyone involved. It doesn't take much to violate trust. Just a few bad players in the market can spoil it for everyone else.
Dan Ariely
Today, find a point of stillness: brief, but precious slight, but full small, but luminously real. Find a point stillness in the balance of all things between the breathing out and breathing in.
Na'ama Yehuda
The amount of evidence and its quality do not count for much, because poor evidence can make a very good story. For some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous - and it is also essential.
Daniel Kahneman
The cold rationalism simply covers for raw, wounded emotion. The more driven people are by the mind, the more they feel and further encode their feelings. The thickness of the tarpaulin cover is as the size of the emotion.
Dalit Orbach
Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.
Daniel Kahneman