106 Quotes by Alexandra Petri

Thanks to postmodernism, we tend to see all facts as meaningless trivia, no one more vital than any other. Yet this disregard for facts qua facts is intellectually crippling. Facts are the raw material of thought, and the knowledge of significant facts makes sophisticated thought possible.

No matter how successful you are, no matter how good you are at what you do, even if a golden path rolls out in front of your feet your whole life, there will come one particularly bleak Tuesday when you glance over at Facebook and notice that Jen From Down The Hall has just won an Oscar.

In high school, you at least have to get up at a reasonable hour and show up at places on time. College, on the other hand, gave me the sense that I could complete major assignments at 2 A.M. without suffering any repercussions, along with the erroneous idea that in real life, things started after one in the afternoon.

Worst case scenario, nothing I do has any value or purpose, but if I can make someone laugh, I'm at least as useful as a piece of quiche would be.

I would say 'competence' actually might be slightly more important than passion. I understand that it is important to feel strongly about things, but give me a competent dentist over a passionate dentist any day, if only because something about the phrase 'passionate dentist' is deeply unnerving.

Bad things happen, and you can only be so prepared.

A picture can hide as much as it reveals.

If you want to be famous because you do something well or badly, be it singing while fat or hitting balls of various shapes and hues, you have to be prepared to divulge. We live in the age of the chronic overshare.

Everyone praises Harvard 'for the students.' But what makes Harvard's students so great is that they are, in many ways, a cross-section of the larger world. They are normal people who happen to be excellent, and this sets them apart. People who go to Yale go because they want to attend Yale. People who go to Harvard go because they can.