Celia Elizabeth Green (born 26 November 1935) is a British writer on philosophical skepticism and psychology.
It is superfluous to be humble on one's own behalf; so many people are willing to do it for one.
Most of the research which is done is determined by the requirement that it shall, in a fairly obvious and predictable way, reinforce the approved or fashionable theories.
What appear to be the most valuable aspects of the theoretical physics we have are the mathematical descriptions which enable us to predict events. These equations are, we would argue, the only realities we can be certain of in physics; any other ways we have of thinking about the situation are visual aids or mnemonics which make it easier for beings with our sort of macroscopic experience to use and remember the equations.
In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.
The human race has to be bad at psychology; if it were not, it would understand why it is bad at everything else.
It is curious that while one's education is the part of one's life over the conditions of which one has least individual control, the results of it are held to brand one irrevocably.
When someone says his conclusions are objective, he means that they are based on prejudices which many other people share.
Only the impossible is worth attempting. In everything else one is sure to fail.
If you stand up to the human race you lose something called their 'goodwill'; if you kowtow to them you gain. . . their permission to continue kowtowing.
The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.
People accept their limitations so as to prevent themselves from wanting anything they might get.
Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.
Physics has never been a comfortable subject for human psychology. The desire to regard everything outside the human race's purview as insignificant, and everything within that purview as firmly under the control of tribal myth and custom, is as strong today as it was in the time of Galileo.
People having religions is an insult to the universe.
Young people wonder how the adult world can be so boring. The secret is that it is not boring to adults because they have learnt to enjoy simple things like covert malice at one another's expense.
The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.
People have been marrying and bringing up children for centuries now. Nothing has ever come of it.
It is easier to study the 'behavior' of rats than people, because rats are smaller and have fewer outside commitments. So modern psychology is mostly about rats
Lack of clarity is always a sign of dishonesty.
One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.