Scott Adams
Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.Collection: Dating
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.Collection: Forgiveness
Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.Collection: Business
There's kind of a toll you have to pay with a cat; if you don't pet her for 10 minutes she'll bother you for six hours.Collection: Pet
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?Collection: Intelligence
Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.Collection: Business
Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of creating a dry-cleaning empire won't be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison liked to take naps.Collection: Dreams
Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.Collection: Failure
Technology will definitely solve all our problems, but in the process it will create brand new ones. But that's O.K. because the most you can expect from life is to get to solve better and better problems.Collection: Technology
If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it's your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall.Collection: Failure
If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.Collection: Movies
Happiness is nothing but good health and freedom, and money is the single best way you can buy your freedom.Collection: Money
Women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.Collection: Society
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.Collection: Art
If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you may wake up each day with failure in mind because the goal is hard to reach, and you are progressing only by small amounts. It takes up all your willpower. I recommend that instead of a goal, you have a system.Collection: Failure
It doesn't take many people to have a bad sense of humor to get in trouble at a corporation.Collection: Humor
In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks.Collection: Car
The only risk of failure is promotion.Collection: Failure
The world is like a reverse casino. In a casino, if you gamble long enough, you're certainly going to lose. But in the real world, where the only thing you're gambling is, say, your time or your embarrassment, then the more stuff you do, the more you give luck a chance to find you.Collection: Time
We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.Collection: Knowledge
The best things in life are silly.Collection: Best
Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.Collection: Success
You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.
Normal people... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.
Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.
I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.
Let's form proactive synergy restructuring teams.
You don't argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don't argue when a women tells you she's only making 80 cents to your dollar. It's the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.
You don't have to be a 'person of influence' to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.
The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers.
The most important thing when you study hypnosis is that you learn that humans are irrational. Until you understand that, hypnosis is hard to do... For me, it was this great awakening to understand that humans are deeply irrational, and it's probably the greatest influence on me in terms of my writing.
The greenest home is the one you don't build. If you really want to save the Earth, move in with another family and share a house that's already built. Better yet, live in the forest and eat whatever the squirrels don't want.
I've tried lots of things. The reality is, I'm excited by everything on Day 1. And if by Day X things aren't working the way I hoped, I lose my passion. I have not seen the correlation between my passion and my success.
We don't always have an accurate view of our own potential. I think most people who are frightened of public speaking and can't imagine they might feel different as a result of training. Don't assume you know how much potential you have. Sometimes the only way to know what you can do is to test yourself.
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
You give anybody a billion dollars, and of course they are passionate. Passion is one of those things like willpower in that there's 'magical thinking' about it. You've got to be careful about 'magical thinking.'
Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company.
I don't get embarrassed by the same things that other people do. I would say that probably the biggest thing that holds people back is, 'If I do this, I'm going to look like an idiot if it doesn't work out.'
The longer you work here, diverse it gets.
One way to compensate for a tiny brain is to pretend to be dead.
I get mail; therefore I am.
My failed corporate career became the fodder for the 'Dilbert' comic. Once it became clear I would not be climbing any higher on the corporate ladder, it freed me to mock managers without worrying that it would stall my career. Most failures create some sort of unplanned freedom. I took full advantage of mine.
Before 'Dilbert,' I tried to become a computer programmer. In the early days of computing, I bought this big, heavy, portable computer for my house. I spent two years nights and weekends trying to write games that I thought I would sell. Turns out I'm not that good a programmer, so that was two years that didn't work out.
I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.
Home is pretty utopian.
I'm a poor artist. Through brute force, I brought myself up to mediocre. I've never taken a writing class, but I can write okay.