89 Quotes by Ken Jennings

"As Jeopardy devotees know, if you’re trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all. On any given night, nearly all the contestants know nearly all the answers, so it’s just a matter of who masters buzzer rhythm the best."

"If I start outsourcing all my navigation to a little talking box in my car, I’m sort of screwed. I’m going to lose my car in the parking lot every single time."

"Trivia is mainstream. ‘Nerd’ is the new ’cool."

"There were two problems with this idea. First, it led to crappy “virtual reality” movies like Virtuosity and The Lawnmower Man. And second, in the long run, it turned out to be totally wrong."

"Sure I have a cell-phone, so I don’t have to remember everyone’s number anymore, but that really wasn’t a core part of my brain."

"Trivia, as I’ve said before, shouldn’t really be called “trivia.” Facts about history, geography, books, movies, music – this is the stuff that used to be called good old-fashioned “general knowledge,” the stuff that everybody was supposed to remember from school, regardless of their career niche. We lost something the more we specialized – it started to drain away this vast pool of information that everybody knew. Knowledge was what connected us, and now it distinguishes us."

"I feel about Flannery O’Connor the same way that terrible people feel about Ayn Rand."

"We don’t realize how hard it was to drive anywhere outside the major cities less than a century ago."

"In this country, we were not into detail. Europe developed detail.” “Why do you think that is?” “Weather. The whole history of England consists of finding things to do out of the weather. Which tells you why Russia was even worse. That’s why Russian novels have 182 characters: bad weather."

"If you never open a map until you’re lost, you’re missing out on all the fun."