Marilyn vos Savant
30 quotes
Biography
Marilyn vos Savant is an American magazine columnist who has the highest recorded intelligence quotient (IQ) in the Guinness Book of Records, a competitive category the publication has since retired. Since 1986, she has written "Ask Marilyn", a Parade magazine Sunday column wherein she solves puzzles and answers questions on various subjects, and which popularized the Monty Hall problem in 1990.
"Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses."
"To acquire knowledge, one must study;but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."
"I believe that love--not imitation--is the sincerest form of flattery. Your imitator thinks that you can be duplicated; your lover knows you can't."
"The original answer defines certain conditions, [...] Anything else is a different question."
"Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses."
"The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth."
"If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart."
"A fool is someone whose pencil wears out before its eraser does."
"What women want is what men want. They want respect."
"What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from.""
"Be able to live alone, even if you don't want to and think you will never find it necessary."
"Understand why casinos and racetracks stay in business - the gambler always loses over the long term."
"Be able to back up a car for a considerable distance in a straight line and back out of a driveway."
"Know how to travel from your town to a nearby town without a car, either by bus or by rail."
"I think change is possible, but only for individuals who were never truly gay in the first place and who have a strong personal motivation to recover their heterosexuality."
"Email, instant messaging, and cell phones give us fabulous communication ability, but because we live and work in our own little worlds, that communication is totally disorganized."
"Know the names of past and current artists who are most famous for playing their instruments."
"Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before."
"What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom 'to' and freedom 'from.'"
"The freedom to be an individual is the essence of America."
"Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering."
"Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant."
"Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying."
"The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time."
"Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn't. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces."