Top 120 Marilyn Vos Savant Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

Featured in: Failure Quotes, Motivational Bodybuilding Quotes, Giving Up Quotes

2. “To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

Featured in: Wisdom Quotes, Knowledge Quotes

3. “Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

4. “Experts say you can’t concentrate on more than one task at a time.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

5. “There’s plenty of intelligence in the world, but the courage to do things differently is in short supply.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

Featured in: Courage Quotes

6. “A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

Featured in: Good Morning Quotes

7. “If your head tells you one thing, and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

8. “Be able to set a table so that you feel like you’re dining, not just sitting and eating.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

9. “Feeling is what you get for thinking the way you do.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

10. “Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

11. “The squeaky wheel may get the most oil, but it’s also the first to be replaced.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

12. “An act of justice closes the book on a misdeed; an act of vengeance writes one of its own.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

13. “Be sure to expose yourself to criticism: A fine polish requires an abrasive.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

14. “You can’t be wise without being intelligent, but you certainly can be intelligent without being wise.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

15. “Be able to meet any deadline, even if your work is done less well than it would be if you had all the time you would have preferred.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

16. “Spending waiting moments doing crossword puzzles or reading a book you brought yourself.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

17. “Although spoken English doesn’t obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn’t know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

18. “Multi-tasking arises out of distraction itself.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

19. “Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn’t. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

20. “Almost all of the finer things in life are free or nearly free. You don’t have to pay for the sky at night or snow in the morning or a kiss on the nose when you’re sick. Forgetting that may put you at the mercy of those who seek to profit by convincing you to want whatever it is they have to sell.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

21. “If you’re wondering if you’re dreaming, you’re dreaming.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

22. “When our spelling is perfect, it’s invisible. But when it’s flawed, it prompts strong negative associations.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

23. “Be able to analyze statistics, which can be used to support or undercut almost any argument.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

24. “A 45-year old looks a lot like a 25-year old who’s been out all night. And feels just as good about having survived the experience.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

25. “The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

26. “The lower our self-esteem, the more we’re attracted to our opposite, and the higher our self-esteem, the more we are attracted to another like ourselves.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

27. “Success may be the ability to be happy with whatever we’re stuck with.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

28. “Many people feel they must multi-task because everybody else is multitasking, but this is partly because they are all interrupting each other so much.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

29. “Know what to do if you feel faint or dizzy, especially if you might fall and hit your head.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

30. “Revenge feels right only to those directly involved. Justice feels right even to outsiders.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

31. “Common sense comes from experience, and kids need to fail as well as succeed in order to learn it. It’s difficult to develop common sense when you spend a lot of time in your room where nothing much happens.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

32. “Geometry is beautifully logical, and it teaches you how to think and prove that things are so, step by step by step. Proofs are excellent lessons in reasoning. Without logic and reasoning, you are dependent on jumping to conclusions or – worse – having empty opinions.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

33. “Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

34. “It’s a sad day when so many people shirk the most basic responsibilities of life that simply being respectable becomes behavior worthy of special attention. In other words, I think the people you describe are doing what they should. A society has weak values when it regards going to work every day and taking care of your family as heroic.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

35. “Email, instant messaging, and cell phones give us fabulous communication ability, but because we live and work in our own little worlds, that communication is totally disorganized.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

36. “The only real meaning in life can be found in a good man. And maybe Paris. Preferably the two together.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

37. “It is a lot easier to prove that you don’t love someone than it is to prove that you do, but one of the best ‘proofs’ I know is the desire to devote time to the person with no expectation of any sort of compensation, including gratitude, in return.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

38. “Know the function of a fuse box and the appearance of a tripped circuit breaker.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

39. “Be able to live alone, even if you don’t want to and think you will never find it necessary.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

40. “Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

41. “I would not encourage children or teens to multitask because we don’t know where those efforts may lead.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

42. “Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

43. “Try square dancing-at least long enough to no longer feel silly and begin to have fun.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

44. “Attention-deficit disorders seem to abound in modern society, and we don’t know the cause.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

45. “If achieving your potential requires favorable judgment by others, you are much less likely to succeed.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

46. “Profit is what we have left after we make a donation to a worthwhile cause.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

47. “My thoughts are like waffles – the first few don’t look so good.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

48. “Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

49. “Be able to confide your innermost secrets to your mother and your innermost fears to your father.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant

50. “An error becomes a mistake when we refuse to admit it.”

— Marilyn Vos Savant