Quotes from Leonard Mlodinow

French culture is known for many great attributes, some of which probably have nothing to do with food, wine, and romance.

Evolution is among the most well-established theories in the scientific community. To doubt it sounds to biologists as absurd as denying relativity does to physicists.

You have to have passion for a subject to write about it. You can't expect your readers to feel any excitement if it's nothing but a boring writing exercise for you.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

By subliminal, I mean things that occur in our world that are below the threshold of consciousness but do have a psychological effect on us.

Whatever I've worked on, I've always tried to make my writing personal. I think that's what makes my books somewhat different from what other scientists are doing. You have to tie concepts into everyday life, or they just won't be interesting for readers.

Intentionality and talent always matter. An extraordinary feat is certainly made more likely by someone's focus, hard work, etc. But chance also matters.

I've always loved science, as far back as I can remember. I was very, very curious about how everything worked: the world, the physical universe, chemistry, law. So it was only natural to be curious about how our mind works.

Social rejection doesn't just cause emotional pain; it affects our physical being.

One of the most surprising forms of nonverbal communication is the way we automatically adjust the amount of time we spend looking into another's eyes as a function of our relative social position.

Touch is our most highly developed sense when we are born, and it remains a fundamental mode of communication throughout a baby's first year and an important influence throughout a person's life.

We unwittingly judge products by their boxes, books by their covers, and even corporation's annual reports by their nice glossy finish.

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

Non-human primates spend hours a day grooming each other. And with humans, touching is also important. It's a way to form bonds and connect in modern society. But you can also speed up the use of conscious purposes once you're aware of that, and it can be manipulated.

Scientists attach great importance to the human capacity for spoken language. But we also have a parallel track of nonverbal communication, which may reveal more than our carefully chosen words, and sometimes be at odds with them.

One of the ways we interact with other human beings and form social bonds is through touch, and probably most of us are not aware of the extreme importance of touch.

Touch seems to be such an important tool for enhancing social cooperation and affiliation that we have evolved a special physical route along which those subliminal feelings of social connection travel from skin to brain.

We have emotions for a reason; for instance, imagine pain. You have pain so that if you touch something that's hot, or if you slam your hand with a hammer, you will pull your hand away and not do that again.

We all know that looks matter. What most of us don't understand is just how much looks matter and how difficult it is for us to ignore a person's appearance when making a social judgment.

Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don't know intimately.

'Subliminal' is about how we misinterpret our behavior because we're unaware of what our unconscious minds are doing.

The truth is that our unconscious minds are active, purposeful, and independent. Hidden they may be, but their effects are anything but, for they play a critical role in shaping the way our conscious minds experience and respond to the world.

One of the things your unconscious mind does for you - and it's a great gift - is it gives you extra courage to view the outer world and it does that by giving you an extra-special view of yourself.

On the unconscious level, touch seems to impart a subliminal sense of caring and connection.