I find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action–no matter what the action is–might help you feel better.
A. J. JACOBSI thought religion would eventually wither away and we’d all be worshiping at the altar of science.
More A. J. Jacobs Quotes
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I’m not a fan of ‘write what you know.’ If you don’t know, find out. I knew nothing about the Bible before I started writing ‘The Year of Living Biblically.’ That was kind of the point – to learn.
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After decimating several vegetables, I decide juicing is my favorite form of food preparation. There’s something perversely appealing about subjecting an innocent plant to that much violence.
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One of the interesting things to me is that God grows throughout the Old Testament. He evolves, sort of matures, and becomes kinder.
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I found there were things about religion that I really loved; things like the sense of gratefulness that it brings.
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If my former self and my current self met for coffee, they’d get along OK, but they’d both probably walk out of the Starbucks shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “That guy is kinda delusional.”
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I am officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.
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Scrabble – The game is available in Braille. That’s a nice fact. This makes me feel better about humanity for some reason. I can’t really explain why.
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How do you gag the voice in your head that says, ‘You don’t have to [do it] today. There’s always tomorrow.’?
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The best we can do, to paraphrase Pollan, is to eat whole foods, mostly plants, and not too much.
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I thought religion would eventually wither away and we’d all be worshiping at the altar of science.
A. J. JACOBS -
Paintings! They’re like TV, but they don’t move.
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After a while, if you’re committed, you start to believe in the things in which you’re praying. It’s just cognitive dissonance. You can’t live a completely religious life and not start to have it sink in.
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My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it’ll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It’s like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.
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When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.
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I’m addicted to self-improvement. The thing is, there’s so damn much about myself to improve.
A. J. JACOBS