A. J. Jacobs Quotes - Page 3

Jealousy is a useless, time-wasting emotion that's eating me alive.

I’d recommend learning to accept rejection. Become friends with rejection. Be nice to rejection, because it’s a huge part of being a writer, no matter where you are in your career.

Giulia Melucci has written a wonderfully funny and moving book. It's like Eat, Pray, Love, with recipes.

I prefer the earlier birth control techniques, which ranged from the delicious (using honey as a spermicide) to the aerobic (jumping backward seven times after coitus).

There's a lot of food restriction in the Bible, but it does say you're allowed to eat crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts. I decided to take advantage of that and eat a cricket. It was chocolate-covered, and I'm not sure that's the way they were served in Moses' time. But this was a rule that seemed crazy on the outside, then actually turned out to be pragmatic and compassionate.

After a while, if you're committed, you start to believe in the things in which you're praying. It's just cognitive dissonance. You can't live a completely religious life and not start to have it sink in.

I know that history is simultaneously a bloody mess and a collection of feats so inspiring and amazing they make you proud to share the same DNA structure with the rest of humanity. I know you'd better focus on the good stuff or you're screwed.

I love it when the Bible gives Emily Post-like tips that are both wise and easy to follow.

Its sort of my job to feel good.

I tried the paleo diet, which is the caveman diet - lots of meat. I tried the raw food vegan diet. And I tried the calorie restriction diet, which is the idea is that if you eat very, very little - if you're on the verge of starvation, you will live a very long time. Whether or not you want to, of course, is the idea.

The whole bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man. God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are always two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God, and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn't mean we can't use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways.

I find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action--no matter what the action is--might help you feel better.

I don't believe that prayers actually change God's mind - if there is a God - but I liked praying for people in need. It was like moral weightlifting. I tend to be self-obsessed, and it was nice to get out of my brain once in a while.

Since I was relatively new to the Bible, I was surprised by the Old Testament God. He's wrathful, but at other times, He's incredibly compassionate. He's not a one-dimensional figure at all.

When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.

I thought religion would eventually wither away and we'd all be worshiping at the altar of science.

I got a sense of the amazingness of ordinary life, and I became aware of the marvel that we're around to begin with. I visited a lot of extreme communities, like the Amish, Hasidic Jews, and serpent-handlers. And I was proud, because I think I'm the first person to ever out-Bible-talk a Jehovah's Witness. After four hours, he said, "Okay, I have to go."

I'm all for cafeteria religion. I think there's nothing wrong with cafeterias - I've had some great meals at cafeterias. I've also had some horrible meals, so it's important to pick the right things. Take a heaping helping of compassion and mercy, and leave the intolerance on the table.

A loud noise will get your fight-or-flight response going. This, over the years, can cause real cardiovascular damage.

Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move.

I've rarely said the word "Lord," unless it's followed by "of the Rings.

Sometimes miracles occur only when you jump in.

One of the interesting things to me is that God grows throughout the Old Testament. He evolves, sort of matures, and becomes kinder.