34 Quotes by Jim Holt

It looks good on the surface, but it is going to hurt people trying to get their first job and hurt the unskilled workers that can least afford to get hurt. It will price them out of the job market and put them on welfare and then it will cost all of us.

They've worked their buns off. What wasn't noticed in all this was the preplanning we did kept a lot of the flooding down. We spent three days before the hurricane made landfall going through all the ditches in town, pulling out shopping carts, basketballs, leaves and trash. That helped a lot.

They've worked their buns off, ... What wasn't noticed in all this was the preplanning we did kept a lot of the flooding down. We spent three days before the hurricane made landfall going through all the ditches in town, pulling out shopping carts, basketballs, leaves and trash. That helped a lot.

Jokes often arise involuntarily, like dreams, and tend to be swiftly forgotten. From these similarities Freud inferred that jokes and dreams share a common origin in the unconscious. Both are essentially means of outwitting our inner 'censor.

You have to have a temperamental attraction to dangerous ideas...

To abandon the principle of simplicity would be to abandon all reasoning about the external world

It has been said that the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is so profound that it would occur only to a metaphysician, yet so simple that it would occur only to a child.

When you are trying to understand the world, it is unwise to assume that you occupy a privileged position in it.

Suppose there were nothing. Then there would be no laws; for laws, after all, are something. If there were no laws, then everything would be permitted. If everything were permitted, then nothing would be forbidden. So if there were nothing, nothing would be forbidden. Thus nothing is self-forbidding. Therefore, there must be something. QED.