“The more people that must be involved, the less likely the theory is to be true. A couple of people could pull it off, hundreds or thousands of people would have to be involved, and it's not likely because we would hear about it.”— Michael Shermer
The quote archive
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
Only relatively recently in our own culture, five hundred years or so ago, did a distinction arise that cut society in two, forming separate classes of music performers and music listeners.
— Hans ZimmerAcclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception
Throughout most of the world and for most of human history, music making was as natural an activity as breathing and walking, and everyone participated.
— Hans ZimmerAcclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception
The inexpressible depth of music... easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all of the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain.
— Hans ZimmerAcclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception
Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves.
— Hans ZimmerAcclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception
We humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. We integrate all of these and 'construct' music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music.
— Hans ZimmerAcclaimed film composer known for scores like The Lion King and Inception
I've described celebrities as being 'double agents of the patriarchy,' and whilst things are getting better- and language is changing, we are still not always calling out those who fat shame or age shame women.
— Jameela JamilActress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place
We're up against corporate, almost criminal behaviour. We are up against corporations who are manipulating young, vulnerable people.
— Jameela JamilActress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place
The happier I become with myself, the less I buy… the better my bank account becomes, because I'm not buying nonsense that I never needed.
— Jameela JamilActress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place
The most important thing to realise is this; we control the market, the market does not control us.
— Jameela JamilActress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place
Brands work on the principle that if you break down people's confidence, they will be much more vulnerable to advertising, and much more likely to go out and consume… much more likely to buy things to fix problems they didn't even know they had if it weren't for brands breaking their confidence in the first place.
— Jameela JamilActress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place
It's taken for me to get into my 30s to realise I am more than the media told me I was- I have more to say, so do my friends. We are intelligent, we are strong, we are multi-faceted, we are vulgar and we are funny. It is because we haven't been given the opportunity to exercise these facets of ourselves in the media that we've started to doubt our ability.
— Jameela JamilActress & Mental Health Advocate; Host of "The Good Place
It sounds strange but my system came to me in a sort-of almost otherworldly way. It was very powerful.
— Jordan BelfortStock Broker Convicted of Fraud; Subject of "The Wolf of Wall Street
When you have the confidence that you really are an expert closer, you're a competent closer, the word no doesn't matter, because you know that there's going to be a certain number of no's and a certain number of yes's.
— Jordan BelfortStock Broker Convicted of Fraud; Subject of "The Wolf of Wall Street
Every person is different, but every sale is the same.
— Jordan BelfortStock Broker Convicted of Fraud; Subject of "The Wolf of Wall Street
Understanding sales cuts to the core of basically why people say yes, why people give you rejections, and what has to line up in someone's mind before they say yes. It doesn't matter what you're selling, it could be offline or online, tangible or intangible, expensive or inexpensive. It doesn't matter what it is.
— Jordan BelfortStock Broker Convicted of Fraud; Subject of "The Wolf of Wall Street
Only when I spent a year and a half writing a book, did I realise how long it takes you to do something to get a tangible result. It makes you respect money more when it comes from something you create, rather than just trading back and forth with someone else's cash.
— Jordan BelfortStock Broker Convicted of Fraud; Subject of "The Wolf of Wall Street