Quotes About Advice

It seems that it is the most unsuccessful people who give the most advice, particularly for writing and financial matters.

The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.

Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.

Yet they believe blindly in the stock market, and in the abilities of their pension plan manager. Why do they do so? Because they accept that this is what people should do with their savings, because experts tell them so. The doubt their own sense, but not for a second do they doubt their automatic purchases in the stock market.

As an empiricist (actually a skeptical empiricist) I despise the moralizers beyond anything on this planet: I still wonder why they blindly believe in ineffectual methods. Delivering advice assumes that our cognitive apparatus rather than our emotional machinery exerts some meaningful control over our actions. We will see how modern behavioral science shows this to be completely untrue.

If you hear advice from a grandmother or elders, odds are that it works 90 percent of the time. On the other hand, in part because of scientism and academic prostitution, in part because the world is hard, if you read anything by psychologists and behavioral scientists, odds are that it works at less than 10 percent, unless it is has also been covered by the grandmother and the classics, in which case why would you need a psychologist?

So I end this section with a thought. It is quite perplexing that those from whom we have benefited the most aren't those who have tried to help us (say with "advice") but rather those who have actively tried—but eventually failed—to harm us.

Learning from the Mistakes of Others

The reader knows my opinion on unsolicited advice and sermons on how to behave in life.

It is quite perplexing that those from whom we have benefited the most aren't those who have tried to help us (say with "advice") but rather those who have actively tried—but eventually failed—to harm us.

Of course such advice is usually unsolicited.

No author should be considered as having failed until he starts teaching others about writing.

So, "giving advice" as a sales pitch is fundamentally unethical—selling cannot be deemed advice.

Contrary to what people might expect, I am not recommending that

Lúcio Aneu Sêneca foi um filósofo que por acaso era a pessoa mais abastada do Império Romano, em parte graças a sua esperteza comercial, em parte por ter atuado como conselheiro do extravagante imperador

Another case where economists may inspire us but should never tell us what to do

gently remind him of the fate of the monk whom Ivan the Terrible put to death for delivering uninvited (and moralizing) advice.

So, "giving advice" as a sales pitch is fundamentally unethical—selling cannot be deemed advice. We can safely settle on that. You can give advice, or you can sell (by advertising the quality of the product), and the two need to be kept separate.

Now, remember Winifred, don't bite your fingernails. Don't interrupt when someone else is speaking, and don't go down to the jailhouse at midnight to change places with Prisoners

Donatello, you had better take one of those gay, boyish artists for your companion," said Miriam, when she found the Italian youth at her side.

The Germans now wanted to increase heavy water production to five thousand kilograms a year, and Paul Harteck, whom Tronstad knew from Cambridge, was on his way to advise on new methods to obtain such levels. Realizing the importance of conveying this information to the British, but with Skylark B in jeopardy, Tronstad found a courier—a man planning to escape by boat to Scotland the following week.

That's wisdom you can take to the grave, and dig up when you need it!

First rule of motherhood, dearie: men are screw-ups. Learn it now and you'll be a whole lot happier.

Never ask how. At that moment, it felt like the wisest advice I had ever gotten.