Quotes from Scott Adams

the happiness formula: Eat right. Exercise. Get enough sleep. Imagine an incredible future (even if you don't believe it). Work toward a flexible schedule. Do things you can steadily improve at. Help others (if you've already helped yourself). Reduce daily decisions to routine.

The steering wheel and the engine are of equal importance. It is a human impulse—composed of equal parts arrogance and instinct—to believe we can rank everything in our environment. Importance is not an intrinsic quality of the universe. It exists only in our delusion-filled minds. I can assure you that humans are not in any form or fashion more important than rocks or steering wheels or engines.

You need to control the order and timing of things to be happy. It's important to look at happiness in terms of timing because timing is easier to control than resources.

Never use naughtiness in mixed company, unless your witticism is so funny that your audience will shoot tears of happiness out of their eyes with a velocity sufficient to powerwash a small bus. Any joke that falls short of that standard will make you lose respect in the eyes of everyone except your best friends, who, as you know, lost respect for you long ago.

When life gives you lemons... choke on them and die... you stupid lemon eater.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.

Women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.

And bring me a hard copy of the Internet so I can do some serious surfing.

Of course I don't look busy, I did it right the first time.

I think you should live your life so that the maximum number of people will attend your funeral.

Few things in life are less efficient than a group of people trying to write a sentence. The advantage of this method is that you end up with something for which you will not be personally blamed.

My old life - no amount of getting used to it would have made it right.

I'm surrendering myself to the realities of the Internet.

I don't get embarrassed by the same things that other people do. I would say that probably the biggest thing that holds people back is, 'If I do this, I'm going to look like an idiot if it doesn't work out.'

Before 'Dilbert,' I tried to become a computer programmer. In the early days of computing, I bought this big, heavy, portable computer for my house. I spent two years nights and weekends trying to write games that I thought I would sell. Turns out I'm not that good a programmer, so that was two years that didn't work out.

There are always deadlines I have to meet. I don't let myself get too close to the deadlines, so it's not like I'm just sweating bullets or anything if the clock is ticking. I never let myself get in that situation.

If you spend all your time arguing with people who are nuts, you'll be exhausted and the nuts will still be nuts.

I think if you talk to anybody who ever went from not having much to having enough to buy what they wanted, they're always happier. Now I get that whole '$75,000 a year is some kind of magic number,' but my experience is 'more is better, up to a point.' Then there's a point where it doesn't make any difference.

The longer you work here, diverse it gets.

I think 'Dilbert' will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. 'Dilbert' is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.

The world is like a reverse casino. In a casino, if you gamble long enough, you're certainly going to lose. But in the real world, where the only thing you're gambling is, say, your time or your embarrassment, then the more stuff you do, the more you give luck a chance to find you.

One way to compensate for a tiny brain is to pretend to be dead.

There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.