I don’t believe that prayers actually change God’s mind – if there is a God – but I liked praying for people in need. It was like moral weightlifting. I tend to be self-obsessed, and it was nice to get out of my brain once in a while.
A. J. JACOBSI find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action–no matter what the action is–might help you feel better.
More A. J. Jacobs Quotes
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The key to making healthy decisions is to respect your future self. Honor him or her. Treat him or her like you would treat a friend or a loved one.
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Very few people changed the world by sitting on their couch.
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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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Since I was relatively new to the Bible, I was surprised by the Old Testament God. He’s wrathful, but at other times, He’s incredibly compassionate. He’s not a one-dimensional figure at all.
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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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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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I love to live things, so I wanted to immerse myself and get into the mindset – and sandals – of my forefathers.
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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.
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Behavior shapes emotions.
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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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I grew up in a very secular home with no religion at all, so I was starting from zero.
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I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.
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I was what they call ‘skinny fat’ – a body that resembled a python after swallowing a goat.
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