Explore Quotes by 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.

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

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

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 and keep on working until the work is done... I bet there isn't a single highly successful person who has not depended on grit. Nobody is talented enough to not have to work hard, and that's what grit allows you to do.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

there simply is no way to describe the past without lying. Our memories are not like fiction. They are fiction.

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.

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.

A lie told well is just as good as the truth.

...new ideas are merely several old thoughts that occur at the exact same time.