Chistopher McDougall Quotes

“By unspoken agreement, we all picked an invisible line in the cracked asphalt and toed it.”

“Pondering is a little like considering and a little like thinking, but looser. To ponder, one must let the facts roll around the rim of the mind's roulette wheel, coming to settle in whichever slot they feed pulled to.”

“If you want to meet a woman, it's best just to smile and say hi.”

“Like most women, I hate when a guy tries to pick me up by saying, You are the hottest girl I've ever seen. It's totally unrealistic. There are beautiful women everywhere.”

“In an expansive attempt to establish a foothold among California's intelligentsia and create America's first truly national newspaper, The New York Times launched a slimmed-down West Coast edition in October 1962... The result in LA was a sorry stepsister of the great gray New York Times for its West Coast readers... Reprocessed news dictated from 3,000 miles away by editors who knew zip about what made Southern California tick.”

“The words of the social critic Eric Hoffer were ringing true: "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and turns into a racket.”

“But there's a problem," Dr. Bramble said. He tapped his forehad. "And it's right up here." Our greatest talent, he explained, also created the monster that could destroy us. "Unlike any other organism in history, humans have a mind-body conflict: we have a body built for performance, but a brain that's always looking for efficiency." We live or die by our endurance, but remember: endurance is all about conserving energy, and that's the brain's department. "The reason some people use their genetic gift for running and others don't is because the brain is a bargain shopper.”

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up," Bannister said. "It knows it must outrun the fastest lion, or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running.”

“He was onto something. Something huge. It wasn't just how to run; it was how to live, the essence of who we are as a species and what we're meant to be.”

“Change your thought life to a prayer life.”