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Guy P. Harrison

61 quotes

“Find joy in existence. We live in good times. Now is somewhere between the beginning and the end of everything. . . . Collectively and individually, we must never stop exploring, imagining, experimenting, learning, and solving problems. This should not be difficult for any of us, because it is only human to do these things. This is who we are. It was the way of those remarkable Africans not so long ago in prehistory, and it can be your way now. The closer you look, the more you will see. The more you learn, the more alive and awake you will become.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We all believe silly things. What matters is how silly and how many.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not see the world. We watch internal movies about the world.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are not the sum of your Google searches, Amazon purchases, and Facebook likes. Your online activities should not define you as a person. But, increasingly, they do.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Museums matter because they are invaluable points of collection and contemplation for a species with a complicated past and self-awareness issues. Somewhere in their wonderful mix of beauty, fact, fiction, lies, and error we discover crucial truths about us.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humility is the key. If you are an arrogant, condescending skeptic then you are doing it wrong. Science and critical thinking rest upon a premise that says anyone can be wrong about anything. A good thinker is humble. We also must be mindful of the fact that very intelligent people can hold very dumb beliefs. It’s a human condition. Irrational believers are not inferior people; they simply made a misstep somewhere along the way in their thinking.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Racism is an avoidable culture clash masquerading as inescapable biological warfare.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is not how the 21st century was supposed to be going for us. As a child nurtured on Star Trek reruns, I imagined our species solving poverty, ending war, and colonizing other worlds by now. Silly me. Here I am today discussing a popular belief that reptilian extraterrestrials reside in Buckingham Palace.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The solutions to human problems can only be found in humans. We need to get out of our own way and start acting like sensible sane lifeforms. … Yes, we have a terrible tendency to be shortsighted, greedy, violent, and irrational. But we also have a remarkable capacity for trust, cooperation, and figuring things out.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In attempting to know, we engage in grand and meaningful acts. We use our human brains as time machines, to see and learn from the distant past and to travel forward thousands, millions, and billions of years. This young, patchwork organ that evolved to help ancient primates find food and water, maintain group relationships, achieve sexual intercourse, and imagine the next best tool now carries us to the very ends of the universe and beyond.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world's biggest problem is not sexism, racism, political polarization, war, or income inequality. The key never-ending crisis is that most people can’t or won’t think. Poor thinking skills cut cross all the usual lines to drag down societies like nothing else. Thinking well could alleviate or solve virtually all our problems.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Museums are my cathedrals. Artifacts in glass cases are my sacred relics. I truly believe I have felt something close to religious fervor inside some of these buildings. I even feel that I have experienced the occasional transcendent moment inside a museum.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the potential discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope: “Collectively, as a species, we are standing at the mouth of the deepest and darkest cave of all. As we lean in and turn on the flashlight, we can be confident that wonderful secrets await.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Appreciate the magnificent brain you possess. Protect and nurture it. Strive to be a good skeptic and critical thinker so that fewer hours of your precious life will be squandered on dead-end beliefs. Always try to think like a scientist so that you might better know truth from fiction.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Extreme political manipulation, social media idiocy, QAnon, and other cognitive disasters likely would dry up and shrink to insignificance if robbed of the current deep pool of unquestioning targets ready for assimilation. Those who understand the need to stop America’s slide into ever-deepening irrationality must push our society to raise up new generations of thinking citizens who are capable of identifying and shrugging off unproven claims.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is in everyone’s best interest to realize and remember that the default human way is to believe first and ask questions never. We become better thinkers by recognizing how poor we are at thinking.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our problem is not a predetermined clash of irreconcilable genomes. Racism is generated and empowered by a flawed worldview that can be corrected with scientific and historical knowledge.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That amazing brain currently residing in your skull evolved over millions of years atop a mobile platform that navigated daily within natural environments. Being confined to a concrete box, subjected to artificial light and constant audio/visual stimulation is not its optimal comfort zone. Your Pleistocene brain is misplaced and often disoriented here in the urbanized-computerized 21st century. So treat it to a regular respite by returning to a familiar place. Go home, however briefly. Be among trees, plants, and wildlife, for the good of your brain.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Critical thinking is the indispensable skill for smart living in modern society, and skepticism is the essential posture for the fully awake twenty-first-century human being.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science is not the latest religion and scientists are not exalted priests. We have to think of science as a wonderful tool that is also dangerous. Using it requires responsibility. Science gives us vaccines one moment, nuclear warheads the next. It’s up to us to be wise tool users.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All those Creationism vs. Evolution debates are misaligned and misleading. The real debate should be Creationism vs. Abiogenesis. Creationism is a belief about a supernatural origin of life. Evolution is a theory about how life changes over time. Those are not the same things. Abiogenesis is the science of life’s origin that logically stands in direct opposition to creationism.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Modern museums are elaborate versions of those striking prehistoric hands stenciled on cave walls by people who lived tens of thousands of years ago, or that plaque from Earth placed on the Moon in the summer of 1969. Museums scream to every visitor: “Look at all this stuff! People were here. People figured things out. We did things. And you are part of it!”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every person is a collective, a vast and complex gathering of interdependent life. Any description of ‘human’ must acknowledge these intimate strangers. Our bond with microbes is such that they are not so much riders, parasites, and assistants as part human. And we, it’s becoming increasingly clear, may need to begin thinking of ourselves as part microbe.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The brain produces a customized representation of a scene. What we see, as a matter of routine, are functional fantasies meant to be of practical use. If more people filtered every important observation through an awareness of this, it could significantly reduce self-deception and irrationality. And that would be a big step toward a more sensible world.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have magnificent brains—and use them to believe nonsense and behave as fools. . . . We are enslaved to delusions and too often the servants of subconscious biases. . . . Our great challenge is to use our brains to overcome our brains.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mozart's music on a smartphone can't redeem or compensate for our lust for the ludicrous. Suckers for empty promises, false hopes, and pseudoscientific babble, we are our own worst enemies. Few people take the time to learn how brains process sensory input in misleading ways and how subconscious biases inﬂuence conscious thinking. The result is a global population teeming with easy targets for digitized nonsense and deception.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t passively accept contagions. Turn your mind into an immune system that intercepts invading ideas, assesses them, and destroys the bad ones.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Evolution is the long blur, a constant and living flow of branching relationships. One thing is always connected to another and another. Having no regard for our love of labels and organization, life rolls on as a continual stream of organic matter. The important thing about the origin of the human brain is not pinpointing some specific time, event, or fossil to declare a beginning in order to satisfy our desire for order. What matters is that we understand the process from which it emerged and how deeply rooted the modern human brain is to its past.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember who you are: a human, a lifeform who still carries echoes of the forest and deep memories of the wild. Answer this call. Respond to the mind’s natural attraction to the natural world. Do all you can to nurture your brain’s need for nature so that it may serve you well.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t worry about winning debates and beating up people in heated arguments. That stuff is rarely enjoyable or productive. Instead offer a helping hand. Be positive. Teach. Try to inspire people to think better for their own good.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are not a collection of subspecies separated by biological canyons. Neither nature nor supernatural design imposed the different and often contradictory racial classification systems used around the world.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All known life on Earth today is fundamentally similar, is genetically related, and shares descent from a single-celled common ancestor that lived at least 3 or 4 billion years ago. . . . Sometimes I get so wrapped up in thoughts about evolution, biodiversity, and the surprisingly close relationships between lifeforms that I look around and see only slight variations of genetic code.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The reality is that racial lynchings were a frequent and normal feature of life in the South. This unique method of murder was a devastating form of terrorism that imposed a constant threat to all black people. The white authority structure did not only tolerate or encourage these killings but used the fear of lynchings to control and oppress black people.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must use our brains to overcome our brains. You are the solution to this crazy world we find ourselves in. Do everything you can to reach others. Teach. Elevate. Encourage critical thinking. But do it with kindness and understanding. People who believe crazy things are only guilty of being human. Remember this and show compassion.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science has revealed that human vision is much closer to cognitive theater than video surveillance. But how many people know this? Most are unaware that seeing is largely a creative act, a process that presents us with a version of reality rather than an accurate reproduction.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our present course may be unsustainable. The synergy of increasingly sophisticated deception aimed at unthinking masses promises more crippling confusion, disruption, and chaos, perhaps more than America can endure. Every minute worrying about nefarious microchips in vaccines is time not spent intelligently evaluating risk and assessing evidence. Every day sacrificed at the altar of a conspiracy belief or at the feet of a hollow demagogue is another day lost to possible social and political progress for all.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can easily imagine the first museum having existed a million or more years ago. Picture an elderly Homo erectus proudly displaying an assortment of exquisitely crafted Acheulian hand axes for all to see. Maybe there was even a children’s educational section for hands-on tool making fun. For as long as humans have had stuff, someone probably felt compelled to show off that stuff.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we transitioned to a species that relies so heavily on cognitive abilities, we became the most powerful and profoundly weird creatures of all time. Right now, more than 8 billion people carry inside their heads a three-pound blob of magic, an electrochemical storm of genius and creative madness that is unprecedented and unsurpassed in this planet’s 4.5 billion years of natural history. This is who humans became long ago, and this is who you are now. You are one more unique link in a long, living chain of fantastic inventiveness and brilliant imagination.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s never too late to think.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1972, from a distance of about 18,000 miles away, an Apollo 17 astronaut took a photo of the Earth that later would be named “The Blue Marble.” That single unprecedented image of an illuminated Earth in full jolted billions into contemplating the beauty and fragility of our tiny home in the dark expanse.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Spending a day inside an ornate palace of emotion such as the Louvre or Metropolitan Museum of Art is proof that even the worst of our wars, oppression, and neglect cannot erase the beauty we humans routinely conjure out of thin air. We may hate, but we love, too. Destroyers and creators, that’s us. … Visit museums. Support museums. Love museums. They are necessary reflections in the mirror, the biased but revelatory autobiographies of a species still seeking to know itself.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intelligent design is intellectual surrender. Not understanding how something works or how it came to be is not an answer. Our current ignorance should only be motivation to keep working the problems. Everything is irreducibly complex—until a scientist figures it out.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Making critical thinking a national educational norm is the cognitive vaccine America needs to have a fighting chance of maintaining sufficient sanity. Good thinking prevents and alleviates bad thinking.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But even bad museums can have value. The Creation Museum (Kentucky, USA), for example, may be a vulgar monument to pseudoscience and deception, but it can teach us important things about American culture and humankind in general. I visited museums in a couple of communist countries that were like supervolcanoes of absurd propaganda. But they made me think more about patriotism and the national mythologies of all countries.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we jump to a conclusion before doing research, we tend to look for evidence that supports our beliefs and ignore facts that contradict them. This deprives us of the opportunity to grow our knowledge.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s scary to think about, but we may finally find unity as a species in self-destruction. The first minute of World War III will render nations, races, and religions meaningless concepts because the first thing to die in nuclear fire will be all our beloved imaginary borders.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am confident that we will continue to move toward greater political and legal freedoms, but with many ups and downs along the way. However, we may find that total freedom or something close to it is a difficult challenge, too. Winning freedom of thought and action is one thing, deciding what to do with it will be quite another.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“QAnon is a claim so extraordinarily vacuous that it can almost serve as the perfect litmus test for the pathological absence of critical thinking.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human brain is evolution’s most magnificent disaster, a beautiful and glorious cesspool of brilliant analytical powers, infinite creativity, and pure madness.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is an exciting moment in human history. Collectively, as a species, we are standing at the mouth of the deepest and darkest cave of all. As we lean in and turn on the flashlight, we can be confident that wonderful secrets await.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source