“The strange fact that out of millions of people in the world, your mother and father met and decided to get married to each other. And out of the millions of sperm, that the one with your genes was the… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“To properly engage in magical thinking, I find you have to think of every possible ghastly scenario. That's the only way you outsmart fate.” — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“I was smart enough to know that I shouldn't tell anyone the reason I needed that icy air. No need to spill the secret that I was the genius of all geniuses, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 1980s. That would just inspire envy and skepticism. So I'd just stare at the closed window and stew. If ten minutes went… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share
“I'm hungry enough that I started to salivate at the sight of lettuce. I repeat: lettuce.” — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“When I get it home and start to read it, the first thing I notice is that Warren has copyrighted the phrase “Purpose-driven.” It… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“How do you gag the voice in your head that says, 'You don't have to go to the gym today. There's always tomorrow. C'mon,… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“Back to the books. The world’s largest bell was built in 1733 in Moscow, and weighed in at more than four hundred thousand pounds. It never rang—it was broken by fire before it could be struck. What a sad little story. All that work, all that planning, all those expectations—then nothing. Now it just sits there in Russia, a big… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share
“If the Britannica has taught me anything, it's to be more careful. I don't want to turn into an unseemly noun or verb or adjective someday. I don't want to be like Charles Boycott, the landlord in Ireland who refused to lower rents during a famine, leading to the original boycott. I don't want to be like Charles Lynch, who… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share
“That's what I've noticed in my experiments: almost everything in life is a self-fulfilling prophecy .Probably even believing in self-fulfilling prophecies is a self-fulfilling… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“Mr. Berkowitz clicks open his black American Tourister rolling suitcase. Inside, his tools: a microscope, an old canister with the faded label “vegetable flakes,”… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“What seems terrible at first may turn out to be a great thing. You can't predict.” — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
“Maybe taming my tongue will be good for me in the end. But it's pretty hard when you've got a world filled with idiots… — A.J. Jacobs Copy Share Image
