Scott Adams Quotes

You have to realise that hypnosis doesn't exist: it just works on people's natural suggestibility, their expectations and capacity to unconsciously role play. You can't make someone do anything they don't want to do.

Hypnosis is about shutting down the conscious mind and re-igniting the unconscious and the imagination, so while I give instructions to them under hypnosis, the contestants might interpret those instructions in all kinds of ways.

Life teaches us that human thought almost never walks hand in hand with logic, and it is usually counterproductive to raise the point.

The human race has to be bad at psychology; if it were not, it would understand why it is bad at everything else.

But you don't decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us.

The whole idea of being mesmerized and not in control of your own actions is fascinating and a little spooky. I remember hearing about someone who'd gone to a magic act, and a person in the audience had become hypnotized by observing too closely what magician was doing on stage, and thought it was spooky to lose your consciousness that way.

Human beings are the only creatures who are able to behave irrationally in the name of reason.

I can hypnotize rabbits.

Actually, actually, when he first put us into hypnosis, he didn't know what he was going to get.

Our thoughts are mainly controlled by our subconscious, which is largely formed before the age of 6, and you cannot change the subconscious mind by just thinking about it.

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy.

I feel angry that I can't be hypnotized. I'm not putting it down, and I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. I have talked to a great many people who are very good at it, but so far nobody has ever been able to hypnotize me.

I just think I'm better equipped to make a study of human personality than trying to get into the mind of animals.

Making use of human weaknesses in intelligence work is a logical matter. It keeps coming up, and of course you try to look at all the aspects that interest you in a human being.

I haven't hypnotised a whole lot of celebrities, because they're fearful of it.

If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.

I believe everyone has the ability to be hypnotised, and I think, on different days, different people will have varying levels of susceptibility.

Humans are hard-wired to be irrational when it comes to financial decisions. We must understand that so we don't become the sucker at the poker table.

I think the dark psychology of human beings is very interesting as an artist.

We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.

You're always running into people's unconscious.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.

I think hypnosis is entertaining. I believe it's real.