Tim Urban Quotes

“Every statistic you come across, everything you read in a textbook, everything you learn from parents or teachers, everything you see or read in the news or on social media, every tenet of conventional wisdom – it’s all indirect knowledge.

That’s why perhaps the most important skill of a skilled thinker is knowing when to trust.”

“Genes can’t talk to their animals, so they control them by having them run on specialized survival software I call the 'Primitive Mind'.”

“Human nature is a constant, and when you put that constant into different environments, it produces different behavior. That makes environment the independent variable.”

“It’s natural to assume that the world we grew up in is normal. But nothing about our current world is normal. Because technology is exponential.”

“Your right to swing your arms ends just where another person’s nose begins.”