Cognitive Laziness Quotes

Some people read only because they are too lazy to think.

Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.

Our minds are lazier than our bodies.

People habituate themselves to let things pass through their minds, as one may speak, rather than to think of them. Thus by use they become satisfied merely with seeing what is said, without going any further. Review and attention, and even forming a judgment, becomes fatigue; and to lay anything before them that requires it, is putting them quite out of their way.

Our minds are as much given to laziness as our bodies.

... sometimes when you are asked a question that is difficult, the mind doesn't stay silent if it doesn't have the answer. The mind produces something, and what it produces very characteristically is the answer to an easier but related question.

Cynicism is only intellectual sloth.

People who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it.

Fluency avoids hard thoughts.

Here's something that's contrary to popular belief: I actually don't like thinking. I think people think I like to think a lot. And I don't. I do not like to think at all.

Skimming has led, I believe, to a tendency to go to the sources that seem the simplest, most reduced, most familiar, and least cognitively challenging. I think that leads people to accept truly false news without examining it, without being analytical.

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

There's nothing the world loves more than a ready-made description which they can hang on to a man, and so save themselves all trouble in future.

Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

The snag in being married to a person who knows more or less everything is that one gets hopelessly lazy. ... I never look things up in books because all I need to do is ask him, and when he gives me the answers I don't properly commit them to memory because I know if I forget all I have to do is to ask him again. It is rather like keeping one's brain in a suitcase.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

An instrument that sometimes expresses thought, sometimes obscures thought, but most often replaces thought.

From passions grow opinions; intellectual laziness lets these harden into convictions.

Humans are lazy but not stupid.

I must be allowed to add some explanatory remarks to bring the subject home to reason-to that sluggish reason, which supinely takes opinions on trust, and obstinately supports them to spare itself the labour of thinking.

The labor of thinking was so great to me, that having once come to a conclusion upon any subject, I would rather persist in it, right or wrong, than be at the trouble of going over the process again to revise and rectify my judgment.

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

Anthologies are mischievous things. Some years ago there was a rage for chemically predigested food, which was only suppressed when doctors pointed out that since human beings had been given teeth and digestive organs they had to be used or they degenerated very rapidly. Anthologies are predigested food for the brain.

Our society, where we are right now, our minds are junkyards. We watch TV and sit on the computer all day and barely have an original thought.

As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.