Default What Quotes & Sayings

What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run. — Tony Judt

Sydney tried - sometimes he really tried - but his default mindset didn't have those kinds of manners. What he really meant was more like "Jacob, get over here or I'll freeze your underwear." Something like that. — Rebecca McKinsey

In pain with you, and yet I could not go. I stayed since nothing better came along. I loved you by default or just for show, My life a whistled flat unechoed song. I groped for notches in our dun abyss, And looked for more in lonely only less. I shunned the path adorned with signs to bliss, And stood the loyal ground of wait or guess. It took the tender you to shift the scene, Bold arsonist beneath our tinder stage! I then in friendly fire to earth careen And from our props and ashes disengage. I begged you long with such a silent ache In fear of, wish for mercy for my sake. What Love Feels Like — David Richo

What sort of person you grow into should not be achieved by default, and often that's exactly what happens to kids. I see literature as a method of guidance, information, and contemplation, and consider it the greatest compliment possible when a reader tells me that a book of mine really made him/her think. — Wendelin Van Draanen

The exact process you use to build courage isn't important. What's important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don't regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don't consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you'll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren't regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground. — Steve Pavlina

I spend an awful lot of time just thinking about what is going on in the world and talking to people about that. It's probably one of my default social activities, just getting dinners with friends. — Peter Thiel

Clearly anyone who wants to dismiss Eichmann's testimonies on the grounds of their demonstrated unreliability and shameless self-serving lies can easily do so, and many of my colleagues have done precisely this. But what if our default position is not to dismiss everything Eichmann said and wrote just because he was lying most of the time, but rather to ask what among this mass of lies might nonetheless be of help to the historian, given his unique vantage point and the sheer volume of his testimony?

-- Collected Memories: Holocaust and Postwar Testimony, page 11 — Christopher R. Browning

We all have the same 24/7. What we do with our time becomes our priority. Choose what you do with your time and do not lead a life by default — Patt Hollinger Pickett

And I submit that this is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out. — David Foster Wallace

The seer does not see, by choice, what the blind can see by default ... from within. — T.F. Hodge

The genius behind what I did was understanding comfort: Very few undercover cops are attractive, young women. By default, guys were more willing to talk to them, and young women trusted them because they didn't think it was just some dude trying to feed them roofies and rape them. I never personally sold drugs — Anonymous

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home. — David Foster Wallace

IDers argue that such traits, involving many parts that must cooperate for that trait to function at all, defy Darwinian explanation. Therefore, by default, they must have been designed by a supernatural agent. This is commonly called the "God of the gaps" argument, and it is an argument from ignorance. What it really says is that if we don't understand everything about how natural selection built a train, that lack of understanding itself is evidence for super-natural creation. — Jerry A. Coyne

I feel like I missed my era, because I remember the time when black people uplifted each other and looked for the positives. I feel sorry for the people who live their lives in the negative default setting because they filter out what's good, and that's no way to live. — Michael Jai White

Human nature was structured through the eons.
What our environment of persistent scarcity has done to us during all that time is undeniable; it has transformed a particular behavior that insures collective survival in situations of scarcity into our "default" or basic code of behavior in all situations. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

Not to decide is to decide. Letting something go until it 'decides itself' is Life by Default. You don't want to live that way. So choose. Choose right now. Stop worrying about what you can 'lose' or how you can 'win' and just follow your joy. Where does your joy say you should go? — Neale Donald Walsch

The money has to be deferred with what they call "clawback," which means they can get it back if I lose it all. So that guy making ten million a year selling credit default swaps, if we're going to keep five million of it in escrow for ten years, and with the right to go back and get it, if he starts losing money, then we're going to give people the right incentives not too take so much risk. — Richard Thaler

I chose Journalism by default. I always loved TV, and I had no idea what else to do, so I studied what interested me. — Frank Caliendo

Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Them them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at those contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they'll break themselves trying for what they'll never achieve. — N.K. Jemisin

We teach aspirational ethics. What I teach my students is, You're born heroic. I go into these animal studies, and heroism is actually in our nature. What you have to do is make sure that the system doesn't change you, that our educational system doesn't teach you to be willfully blind and to forget your aspirations, because that's the default position. — Marc Edwards

This is what the real, no-shit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. — David Foster Wallace

Return'd so soon! Rather approached too late: the capron burns, the pig falls from the spit, the clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell; my mistress made it one upon my cheek: she is hot because the meat is cold; the meat is cold because you have no stomach, you have no stomach, having broke your fast; but we, that know what 'tis to fast and pray, are pentent for your default today. — William Shakespeare

It's the default premise in science: If you observe something in nature only once, you assume that what you've seen is typical. That's because 'typical' is just another way of saying 'most probable.' — Seth Shostak

As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. We are at risk, without quite fully realizing it, of living lives that are less our own than we imagine. — Tim Wu

In this life, all symphonies remain unfinished. Our deep longings are never really satisfied. What this means, among other things, is that we are not restful creatures who sometimes get restless, fulfilled people who sometimes are dissatisfied, serene people who sometimes experience disquiet. Rather, we are restless people who occasionally find rest, dissatisfied people who occasionally find fulfillment, and disquieted people who occasionally find serenity. We do not naturally default into rest, satisfaction, and quiet but into their opposite. — Ronald Rolheiser

Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means. — Arundhati Roy

How many of us even know what our default state of being is? Check yours at random times; reset it to positive, grateful, disciplined or faithful. Don't ever let it idle on negative, greedy, lax or doubtful. — Toni Sorenson

As an Irish person, there's a historical fascination with America: America is the default green and promised land for Irish people and Italians; that's what we grow up with. — Dylan Moran

When you do what's important now for you, you create a past that leaves you ready to handle the present. By default, the future is taking care of itself as you make decisions that are acceptable to you no matter what happens tomorrow. — John Kuypers

My default answer to everything is no. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word no forms in my mind, sometimes accompanies by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? No. Can I wear your necklace? No. When is dinner? No. What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I want to say yes. Yes, you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes, you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes, you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make your tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood racoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could come back to life as your uncle, so I could give you more. But, when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against those wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end. — Kelly Corrigan

It's ridiculous, how people judge talent. Or, rather, don't judge. They just default to what everyone else thinks. — Siobhan Vivian

It's very possible to live life without disliking anyone. It's all vibration. We can get to the point where 'dislike' does not even register as an option in the default settings of our minds.

Some may wonder, 'What does it matter if I like or dislike people?'

In my perception, it matters greatly since dislike influences our entire energetic body. It becomes part of our vibrational aura, what we're emitting and receiving in return from the world. How we respond to the world is how the world will treat us. — Alaric Hutchinson

If you don't decide what your life is about, it defaults to what you spend your days doing. — Robert Breault

And yet sometimes she worried about what those musty old books were doing to her. Some people majored in English to prepare for law school. Others became journalists. The smartest guy in the honors program, Adam Vogel, a child of academics, was planning on getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic himself. That left a large contingent of people majoring in English by default. Because they weren't left-brained enough for science, because history was too dry, philosophy too difficult, geology too petroleum-oriented, and math too mathematical
because they weren't musical, artistic, financially motivated, or really all that smart, these people were pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade: reading stories. English was what people who didn't know what to major in majored in. — Jeffrey Eugenides

To get Firefox or Chrome, you have to demonstrate some resourcefulness and download a different browser. Instead of accepting the default, you take a bit of initiative to seek out an option that might be better. And that act of initiative, however tiny, is a window into what you do at work. — Adam M. Grant

I love being on stage. I'm completely, totally relaxed. It's the only time in my life when I know where I am and what's coming next. The other Robert Powell is probably fairly melancholic. Let's just say happiness isn't my default position. There are dark parts. I'm very good at it. I frighten people sometimes. — Robert Powell

I've always been and will always be very private about my personal life. If anything ever goes public, it is by default, because I happened to be in a place where I was being watched. But for the most part, I honestly don't care what people think. I never have. If I did, I'd probably present myself a little more carefully. — Michelle Rodriguez

I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn't think that. What we did learn is this - it's a hostage that's worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done. — Mitch McConnell

They ask me what the biggest thing I have going on right now is, and I usually say, "I think this interview?" And then they don't get that it's a joke. So then I say, Yogi Bear 3D. That's my default. — T. J. Miller

I don't have a career, I don't have a family, and I don't know what to do next. I've been so determined to escape anything permanent, and now I just feel like I'm nowhere. And what if that's the permanent thing by default? — Jonathan Tropper

There's a lot that's wrong with the way we work - bad habits that develop around control of information, people hoarding information as a means of preserving their own power. When you're using Slack, everyone can see what's going on because the default mode is public. — Stewart Butterfield

I am not a person who feels easy talking about blood or desire. I rarely used the word woman myself. But such things are the natural facts of what we are, I suppose we have to follow out these signs in the endless struggle against forgetting. The truth is, I lived out my adolescence mainly in default of my father's favor. But I perceived that I could trouble him less if I had no gender. — Anne Carson

We believe that it is very important that we have hopefully averted what would have been the most substantial headwind of all, which is a default for the first time in our history, and that that will contribute to a more positive environment that we hope will allow for greater growth and job creation. — Jay Carney

If change is what you're after, unify your broadcast and quit muddying up the signals with thoughts that contradict your preferences. The experience of happiness, love and abundance is actually the default Life design. It's already available. You just need to clean out the debris that's blocking your view. — Debbianne DeRose

Can you imagine a life with no fear? What if faith, not fear, was your default reaction to threats? — Max Lucado

Kate short-circuits my brain. In my head we always have these clear coherent exchanges, but once we meet, what comes out it is, "Kate, do what I say or I'll kill you." Her default reply is, "Fuck you!" and we go downhill from there. — Ilona Andrews

If a determined, disciplined gang of statists were to make an assault on the crumbling remnants of a mixed economy, boldly and explicitly proclaiming the collectivist tenets which the country had accepted by tacit default - what resistance would they encounter? The dispirited, demoralized, embittered majority would remain lethargically indifferent to any public event. And many would support the gang, at first, moved by a desperate, incoherent frustration, by a need to protest, not knowing fully against what, by a blind desire to strike out somehow at the suffocating hopelessness of the status quo. — Ayn Rand

Honor our sense of right and wrong
our sense of what others need from us and how we ought to act towards them ... Because we go against this sense
because we fail to act as we feel we should
that we grow resentful and feel alienated. We convince ourselves that others are making our lives intolerable. On the other hand, when we treat them as we feel we should, we have no occasion to feel this way. We can care openly for them because caring, not selfishness, is our "natural" condition (in computer jargon, our "default setting"). We alienate ourselves from theirs when we compromise our integrity, and we care for them when we don't. — C. Terry Warner

That's sweet. Nice of you." Johnson put his hands in his pockets. Dove couldn't help but wonder if he was massaging a sore bag of testicles. Dove looked around, and Johnson shuffled his feet. It seemed neither knew what to say, but she hoped neither wanted to part ways either.
Johnson's default was always medical.
"How's your infection?"
Die. Die. Kill me.
"It's ... cleared up ... nicely." Dove twisted her hand into her hair. — Debra Anastasia

Working for several years as a waitress, you learn really quickly a couple of default scripts, so you know exactly what the interaction is going to be when the person sits down at the table. — Ann Leckie

Both had trouble generating conviction of their own but no trouble at all reacting to what they viewed as the false conviction of others. — Michael Lewis

Because revelations of systemic deception erode our most basic, default expectation of good faith, they play an outsize role in producing a crisis of authority. Each exposure of previously secret misdeeds - steroid use, Ponzi schemes, rigged intelligence - produces an acute and debilitating psychological effect. Vertigo sets in, similar to that experienced by a spouse who, after decades of what he thought was a happy, loyal marriage, discovers his wife has been cheating all along. Suddenly we realize we live in a world entirely more depraved than the one we thought we inhabited. — Christopher L. Hayes

Hundreds of studies confirm that human forecasts are flawed and biased. Human decision making is not so great either. Again to take just one example, consider what is called the "status quo bias," a fancy name for inertia. For a host of reasons, which we shall explore, people have a strong tendency to go along with the status quo or default option. — Richard H. Thaler

People don't like what I represent, and they think I'm trying to represent the whole gay community just because I'm a gay person and I make music. By default I'm supposed to represent a whole community? I think that's ridiculous. — Steve Grand

If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. — David Foster Wallace

I, for one, am profoundly grateful to feel the hand of God at work in my life. But at the beginning and end of the day, when my default setting is to show kindness and love to others, I never regret it. And to me, that is what faith is all about. — Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick

More often than not, what people put up online using social media is widely accessible because most systems are designed such that sharing with broader or more public audiences is the default. Many popular systems require users to take active steps to limit the visibility of any particular piece of shared content. This is quite different from physical spaces, where people must make a concerted effort to make content visible to sizable audiences.8 In networked publics, interactions are often public by default, private through effort. — Danah Boyd

I wish more fantasy, especially the dominant fantasy that draws heavily on British and Christian lore, would wrestle with its own ethnospecific nature and what that means when the story is set somewhere where more than one belief system is in operation. If all you do is pay lip service to it, you can get the kind of thing where the writer has thrown one Hindu god into a Christianist fantasy (rendering said god by default a demon or otherwise inferior to the dominant religious system of the story, which is such an insult), and the hero is able to vanquish it by chanting a spell in church Latin. — Nalo Hopkinson

Even this abbreviated rundown of mind-brain philosophies would not be complete without what the Australian philosopher David Chalmers calls "don't-have-clue materialism." This is the default position of those who have no idea about the origins of consciousness or the mind but assert that "it must be physical, as materialism must be true," as Chalmers puts it. "Such a view is held widely, but rarely in print." One might add that many working scientists hold this view without really reflecting on the implications of it. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

Become aware of your beliefs and automatic default settings. Bring them into the light of your present, adult knowledge. Gently acknowledge that they are what they are. Then accept that they constitute what you've believed until now, and that you can transform them into beliefs that allow you to fully express who you really are. Without judgment, patiently begin working to change subconscious and limiting beliefs into true expressions of your authentic self. — Sue Thoele

Good leadership is hard to measure on a daily basis which is why so many default to doing what's easy to measure instead. — Simon Sinek

So remember, if you're feeling bitter - or sorry for yourself about what you've done, and how much good you've accomplished - or if you find yourself more than anyone else talking about the good you've done, you're doing it for the wrong reasons, because it should be the default. — Ysabella Brave

While it would have been straightforward, and perfectly legal, to allow Irish banks or the Greek state to default to their private creditors (so as to respect the no-bailout clause), the authorities' guilty desire to bail out the German and French banks (without telling taxpayers that this was what they were doing) led to the need to violate the no-bailout rule by concocting another rule: the no-default rule, which was never part of Europe's original set of rules. (...) Both the freshly minted no-default rule and the original no-bailout clause were political whims of the strong disguised as legal constraints upon the weak. In reality, the strong break their rules at will and concoct new rules whenever they think it suits them. — Yanis Varoufakis

Our "default setting" is to be autonomous and self-directed. Unfortunately, circumstances - including outdated notions of "management" - often conspire to change that default setting and turn us from Type I to Type X. To encourage Type I behavior, and the high performance it enables, the first requirement is autonomy. People need autonomy over task (what they do), time (when they do it), team (who they do it with), and technique (how they do it). Organizations that have found inventive, sometimes radical, ways to boost autonomy are outperforming their competitors. — Daniel H. Pink

What kind of life is it if you don't let yourself experience it? If you don't go for what you want and live how you want? If you don't open your mouth and say what's important and cling to those you love? Not being who you are, or saying how you feel, or fighting for what you love, not being willing to risk your heart, is losing by default. — Nyrae Dawn

My take on the indigent is that some are there because of temporary setbacks, some by default, and some for lack of an alternative. Some are needy, some are off their meds, some have opted out, some have been ousted from facilities where they might be better served. Many are there for life and not always by personal choice. Alcoholic, addicted, aimless, illiterate, unmotivated, unskilled, or otherwise unable to prosper, they sink to the bottom, and if they're down for any length of time, they lose the capacity to climb back out of the hole into which they've fallen. If there's a remedy, I don't know what it is. From what I've seen of the problem, most solutions perpetuate the status quo. — Sue Grafton

If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default. — Stephen R. Covey

as inflation has fallen, so bonds have rallied in what has been one of the great bond bull markets of modern history. Even more remarkably, despite the spectacular Argentine default - not to mention Russia's in 1998 - the spreads on emerging market bonds have trended steadily downwards, reaching lows in early 2007 that had not been seen since before the First World War, implying an almost unshakeable confidence in the economic future. — Niall Ferguson

On the third, we got into troubles. Baz Jesek had gotten more and more involved with equipment and maintenance - he is a good engineer, I'll give him that - I was tactical commander, and Oser - I thought by default, but now I think design - took up the administrative slack. Could have been good, each doing what he did best, if Oser'd been working with and not against us. In the same situation, I'd have sent assassins. Oser employed guerilla accountants. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Of course most Americans don't know how A.I.G. brought the world's financial system to near-ruin or what credit-default swaps are. They may not even know what A.I.G. stands for. But Americans do make the connection between their fears about their own jobs and their broad understanding of the A.I.G. debacle. — Frank Rich

Everyone's default state is this pleasantry state. My goal in the show is to undercut that as quickly as possible. If you really do let it sit, it's sometimes amazing what comes out of people. — Nathan Fielder

Human being's possess the cognitive ability to survey and study the biological and cultural constraints that influence us in order to gain an enhanced understanding of who each of us are. Comprehension of what comprises a self allows human beings to monitor and regulate their thoughts and actions and therefore revise and modify their sense of self. How much conscious control we assert over our minds as well as what decisions through default we leave essentially unregulated and in the sole providence of the unconscious mind determines our self-identity. Self-identity in turns affects personal decision-making, which alters our external world. The combined impact of millions of people making conscious choices exerts a profound impact upon reality, the physical world that is constantly in flux. — Kilroy J. Oldster

So what is the role that credit default swaps can play in an economy? Well my feeling is that if these things actually will now be traded on either exchanges or some kind of central clearing, they are going to be a very good measure of the credit worthiness of different companies. — Robert F. Engle

The American people were really not 100% convinced that this idea of default was really going to occur, and I think the media, current company excepted here, did not help in that regard because they confused the American people about what default actually meant. — Bill Johnson

My default position is not to be an actor. My default position is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. If that means I continue in acting, great! I'd love that. But if it means I need to change professions someday because I can't provide for my family, well, that's what I need to do. — Kirk Cameron

Islamism demanded no less of a root-and-branch overhaul of society. But because it was cloaked in religious garb, no one quite knew what to do with it, and people were desperate not to offend. There was confusion over whether to define our activism as a cultural identity, an ideology or a faith. To top it off, Islamism went through a decade of being embraced by both the left and right wings. The default left-leaning liberal position was to embrace the movement as part of multicultural sensitivity: to tell people to stop practising their faith was imperialism in nineties clothing, a colonial hangover bordering on racism. Instead, we were embraced as a new generation of anti-colonial politicised youth. Curiously, the default position on the right was to embrace us too, because it had been the Afghan Mujahideen, backed by the CIA, who fought the Soviet Union. Lest we forget, this was when Hollywood films such as Stallone's Rambo 3 portrayed the Afghan Mujahideen as heroes. — Maajid Nawaz

Since I moved six or seven times the first year I was in New York, I had to be able to roll up the work, and paper would just get destroyed. Once I looked at what I'd done, I realized I had made a painting, sort of by default. — David Salle

Goldman Sachs itself - and so Goldman was in the position of selling bonds to its customers created by its own traders, so they might bet against them. Secondly, there was a crude, messy, slow, but acceptable substitute for Mike Burry's credit default swaps: the actual cash bonds. According to a former Goldman derivatives trader, Goldman would buy the triple-A tranche of some CDO, pair it off with the credit default swaps AIG sold Goldman that insured the tranche (at a cost well below the yield on the tranche), declare the entire package risk-free, and hold it off its balance sheet. Of course, the whole thing wasn't risk-free: If AIG went bust, the insurance was worthless, and Goldman could lose everything. Today Goldman Sachs is, to put it mildly, unhelpful when asked to explain exactly what it did, and this lack of transparency extends to its own shareholders. If a team of forensic accountants went over Goldman's books, they'd be shocked at just how good Goldman is at hiding things, — Michael Lewis

Though Simon imagined that Jace ran the gamut of facial expressions when he was alone with Clary, his default one around other people was a fierce sort of blankness. "He looks," Simon had once said to Isabelle, " like he's thinking about something deep and meaningful, but if you ask him what it is, he'll punch you in the face." "So don't ask him," Isabelle had said, as if she thought Simon was being ridiculous. "No one says you two need to be friends. — Cassandra Claire

We are, by nature, receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God's Word, we still listen from a default self-centered mind-set that is always asking, What can I get out of this? — David Platt

There are a great many of these accusers, and they have been accusing me now for a great many years, and what is more, they approached you at the most impressionable age, when some of you were children or adolescents; and literally won their case by default, because there was no one to defend me. — Socrates

Back in July 2003, he'd written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a likely housing crash: "Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. During the 1930s, housing prices collapsed nationwide by roughly 80%. — Michael Lewis

Case in point: Warnings on cigarette packages can increase a smoker's urge to light up. A 2009 study found that death warnings trigger stress and fear in smokers - exactly what public health officials hope for. Unfortunately, this anxiety then triggers smokers' default stress-relief strategy: smoking. Oops. It isn't logical, but it makes sense based on what we know about how stress influences the brain. Stress triggers cravings and makes dopamine neurons even more excited by any temptation in sight. It doesn't help that the smoker is - of course - staring at a pack of cigarettes as he reads the warning. So even as a smoker's brain encodes the words "WARNING: Cigarettes cause cancer" and grapples with awareness of his own mortality, another part of his brain starts screaming, "Don't worry, smoking a cigarette will make you feel better! — Kelly McGonigal

The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I've come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity, without the drawback of being dead. — Lynne Sharon Schwartz