Jonah Lehrer Quotes & Sayings

It doesn't matter if people are playing jazz or writing poetry
if they want to be successful, they need to learn how to persist and persevere, how to keep on working until the work is done. Woody Allen famously declared that "eighty percent of success is showing up." NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) teaches kids how to show up again and again. — Jonah Lehrer

If you're trying to be more creative, one of the most important things you can do is increase the volume and diversity of the information to which you are exposed. — Jonah Lehrer

Children can't help but create: they need to put their mind on the page, they want to paint, to sculpt, to write short stories. — Jonah Lehrer

We need to be willing to risk embarrassment, ask silly questions, surround ourselves with people who don't know what we're talking about. We need to leave behind the safety of our expertise. — Jonah Lehrer

The imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles. — Jonah Lehrer

New ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time. — Jonah Lehrer

Rejection process is not fun. It's the red pen on the page, the discarded sketch, sometimes is the only way forward. — Jonah Lehrer

...Prions violate most of biology's sacred rules. They are one of those annoying reminders of how much we don't know. — Jonah Lehrer

Every creative journey begins with a problem. It starts with a feeling of frustration, the dull ache of not being able to find the answer. We have worked hard, but we've hit the wall. We have no idea what to do next. — Jonah Lehrer

Grit is the stubborn refusal to quit. — Jonah Lehrer

The benefit of such horizontal interactions - people sharing knowledge across fields - is that it encourages conceptual blending, which is an extremely important part of the insight process. — Jonah Lehrer

The answer will only arrive after we stop looking for it. — Jonah Lehrer

The best way to solve a problem? Try explaining it to somebody outside your field. — Jonah Lehrer

Like a work of art, we exceed our materials. Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery. Neither truth alone is our solution, for our reality exists in plural — Jonah Lehrer

How do we regulate our emotions? The answer is surprisingly simple: by thinking about them. The prefrontal cortex allows each of us to contemplate his or her own mind, a talent psychologists call metacognition. We know when we are angry; every emotional state comes with self-awareness attached, so that an individual can try to figure out why he's feeling what he's feeling. If the particular feeling makes no sense - if the amygdala is simply responding to a loss frame, for example - then it can be discounted. The prefrontal cortex can deliberately choose to ignore the emotional brain. — Jonah Lehrer

Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill. — Jonah Lehrer

The vocational approach at NOCCA (New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts) helps build grit in students. It teaches them how to be single-minded in pursuit of a goal, to sacrifice for the sake of a passion. The teachers demand hard work from their kids because they know, from personal experience, that creative success requires nothing less. — Jonah Lehrer

We are the poem, his poem says, that emerges from the unity of the body and the mind. That fragile unity
this brief parenthesis of being
is all we have. Celebrate it. — Jonah Lehrer

There simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction. — Jonah Lehrer

The one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. — Jonah Lehrer

Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process. — Jonah Lehrer

Three individuals form a partnership and agree to divide the
profits equally. X invests $9,000, Y invests $7,000, Z invests
$4,000. If the profits are $4,800, how much less does X receive
than if the profits were divided in proportion to the amount invested? — Jonah Lehrer

We travel because we need to, because distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. Several new science papers suggest that getting away is an essential habit of effective thinking. When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we'd previously suppressed. We start thinking about obscure possibilitiebsthat never would have occurred to us if we'd stayed home. — Jonah Lehrer

If our DNA has a literary equivalent, it's Finnegan's Wake. — Jonah Lehrer

Every creative story is different. And every creative story is the same. There was nothing. Now there is something. It's almost like magic. — Jonah Lehrer

There is something scary about letting ourselves go. It means that we will screw up, that we will relinquish the possibility of perfection. It means that we will say things we didn't mean to say and express feelings we can't explain. It means that we will be onstage and not have complete control, that we won't know what we're going to play until we begin, until the bow is drawn across the strings. While this spontaneous method might be frightening, it's also an extremely valuable source of creativity ... the lesson about letting go is that we contain our own creativity. We are so worried about playing the wrong note or saying the wrong thing that we end up with nothing at all. — Jonah Lehrer

Expertise is simply the wisdom that emerges from cellular error. Mistakes aren't things to be discouraged. On the contrary, they should be cultivated and carefully investigated. — Jonah Lehrer

The world is more random than we can imagine. That's what our emotions can't understand. — Jonah Lehrer

Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. "Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it's always invigorating," [Charlan] Nemeth [a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley] says. "It wakes us right up. — Jonah Lehrer

In fact, even fleeting feelings of delight can lead to dramatic increases in creativity. After watching a short, humorous video - Beeman uses a clip of Robin Williams doing standup - subjects have significantly more epiphanies, at least when compared with those who were shown scary or boring videos. Because positive moods allow us to relax, we focus less on the troubling world and more on these remote associations. Another ideal moment for insights, according to Beeman and John Kounios, is the early morning, shortly after waking up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganized, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas. The right hemisphere is also unusually active. — Jonah Lehrer

Money chases good ideas — Jonah Lehrer

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. — Jonah Lehrer

When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art. — Jonah Lehrer

And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer. — Jonah Lehrer

What you discover when you look at creativity from the perspective of the brain is that it is universal. We're all creative all of the time, we can't help but be creative. — Jonah Lehrer

In fact, the only way to remain creative over time
to not be undone by our expertise
is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don't fully understand. — Jonah Lehrer

You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.
From Imagine: How Creativity Works pg 23 (hardcover) — Jonah Lehrer

Trusting one's emotions requires constant vigilance; intelligent intuition is the result of deliberate practice. — Jonah Lehrer

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be. — Jonah Lehrer

I always wanted to be a scientist, I always thought I'd be a scientist, that was the narrative I was carrying around. I worked in a neuroscience lab as an undergraduate and then after, almost five years in total, but I realized I just wasn't good at science. I didn't have the discipline for it. — Jonah Lehrer

Creativity is a catchall term for a variety of distinct thought processes. — Jonah Lehrer

You know more than you know. — Jonah Lehrer

While human nature largely determines how we hear the notes, it is nurture that lets us hear the music. — Jonah Lehrer

To have a style is to be stuck. — Jonah Lehrer

I want to give people theories, I want to expose them to scientific stories that force them to re-evaluate the way they use these three pounds of meat inside their head. — Jonah Lehrer

Suffering through his classes, the young Igor steeped himself in angst. He would later describe his childhood as 'a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell. — Jonah Lehrer

A few years ago, Tor Wager, a neuroscientist at Columbia University, wanted to figure out why placebos were so effective. His experiment was brutally straightforward: he gave college students electric shocks while they were stuck in an fMRI machine. (The subjects were well compensated, at least by undergraduate standards.) — Jonah Lehrer

The inconsistency of genius is a consistent theme of creativity. — Jonah Lehrer

[It's] troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that's often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe. — Jonah Lehrer

In particular, Vaillant says, it is the experience of loving and being loved that most closely predicts how we react to the hardships of life; human attachments are the ultimate source of resilience. "The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points, at least to me, to a straightforward five-word conclusion," Vaillant writes. "'Happiness equals love. Full stop. — Jonah Lehrer

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. — Jonah Lehrer

The fatal misconception behind brainstorming is that there is a particular script we should all follow in group interactions ... [W]hen the composition of the group is right - enough people with different perspectives running into one another in unpredictable ways - the group dynamic will take care of itself. All these errant discussions add up. In fact, they may even be the most essential part of the creative process. Although such conversations will occasionally be unpleasant - not everyone is always in the mood for small talk or criticism - that doesn't mean that they can be avoided. The most creative spaces are those which hurl us together. It is the human friction that makes the sparks. — Jonah Lehrer

Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination. Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth. If something can't be quantified and calculated, then it can't be true. Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything. But every method, even the experimental method, has limits. Take the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world. (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness. — Jonah Lehrer

Why is music capable of inflicting such pain? Because it works on our feelings directly. No ideas interfere with its emotions. This is why "all art aspires to the condition of music." The symphony gives us the thrill of uncertainty
the pleasurable anxiety of searching for a pattern
but without the risks of real life. When we listen to music, we are moved by an abstraction. We feel, but we don't know why. — Jonah Lehrer

In fact, most of us see perseverance as a distinctly uncreative approach, the sort of strategy that people with mediocre ideas are forced to rely on. — Jonah Lehrer

Why is a relaxed state of mind so important for creative insights? When our minds are at ease - when those alpha waves are rippling through the brain - we're more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inward, toward that stream of remote associations emanating from the right hemisphere. In contrast, when we are diligently focused, our attention tends to be directed outward, toward the details of the problems we're trying to solve. While this pattern of attention is necessary when solving problems an-alytically, it actually prevents us from detecting the connections that lead to insights. "That's why so many insights happen during warm showers," Bhattacharya says. "For many people, it's the most relaxing part of the day. — Jonah Lehrer

Science has discovered that, like any work of literature, the human genome is a text in need of commentary, for what Eliot said of poetry is also true of DNA: 'all meanings depend on the key of interpretation.' What makes us human, and what makes each of us his or her own human, is not simply the genes that we have buried into our base pairs, but how our cells, in dialogue with our environment, feed back to our DNA, changing the way we read ourselves. Life is a dialectic. — Jonah Lehrer

Harlow would later write, If monkeys have taught us anything, it's that you've got to learn how to love before you learn how to live. — Jonah Lehrer

Use your conscious mind to acquire all the information you need for making a decision. But don't try to analyze the information with your conscious mind. Instead, go on holiday while your unconscious mind digests it. Whatever your intuition then tells you is almost certainly going to be the best choice. — Jonah Lehrer

Insights, after all, come from the overlap between seemingly unrelated thoughts. They emerge when concepts are transposed, when the rules of one place are shifted to a new domain. — Jonah Lehrer

Colin Powell made a number of mistakes in the run-up to the Iraq war, but his advice to his intelligence officers was psychologically astute: "Tell me what you know," he told his advisers. "Then tell me what you don't know, and only then can you tell me what you think. Always keep those three separated. — Jonah Lehrer

Knowledge can be a subtle curse. When we learn about the world, we also learn all the reasons why the world cannot be changed. We get used to our failures and imperfections. We become numb to the possibilities of something new — Jonah Lehrer

Love is just another name for what never gets old. — Jonah Lehrer

Creativity is a spark. It can be excruciating when we're rubbing two rocks together and getting nothing. And it can be intensely satisfying when the flame catches and a new idea sweeps around the world. — Jonah Lehrer

We see them most when we are o nnthe outside looking in — Jonah Lehrer

Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order. — Jonah Lehrer

There is a presence in what is missing. That presence is our own. — Jonah Lehrer

For too long, we've assumed that there is a single template for human nature, which is why we diagnose most deviations as disorders. But the reality is that there are many different kinds of minds. And that's a very good thing. — Jonah Lehrer

Cities force us to interact with strangers and with the strange. They pry the mind open. And that is why they are the idea that has unleashed so many of our new ideas. — Jonah Lehrer

By the age of 3, children from wealthier households hear, on average, about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. The ratio is reversed in households on welfare. — Jonah Lehrer

Why are corporations so fleeting? ... Instead of imitating the freewheeling city, these businesses minimize the very interactions that lead to new ideas. They erect walls and establish hierarchies. They keep people from relaxing and having insights. They stifle conversations, discourage dissent, and suffocate social networks. Rather than maximizing employee creativity they become obsessed with minor efficiencies. — Jonah Lehrer

Creativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y. — Jonah Lehrer

The great ages did not perhaps produce much more talent than ours,' [T.S.] Eliot wrote. 'But less talent was wasted. — Jonah Lehrer

A lie told well is just as good as the truth. — Jonah Lehrer

The only way to maximize group creativity - to make the whole more than the sum of its parts - is to encourage a candid discussion of mistakes. In part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces cost. When you believe your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you're less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong. — Jonah Lehrer