If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?: Smart Quotes for Dumb Times,   ISBN:9780307460660

Customer Rating: 

These quotes are fun and easy to find. I especially like the occasional editor comments about the quotes that are sometimes a little snarky and fun.

Use this book to find quotes for presentations or blog entries or whatever you can use for a little wittiness or edge to your work.

Customer Rating: 

I heard a review for this book on NPR and it seemed to be great; however, when I got the book, it did not live up to my expectations.

Customer Rating: 

This book includes great quotations but I just don't know if the concept of "filtered and aggregated quotations" works for me. I have had this book on my desk for more than a month but I don't use it that much. I much prefer following the CEO of Zappos and others over Twitter and get some of their daily comments which also include great quotations delivered frequently. You can even follow the authors on Twitter under the screen name qikipedia.

If you like the book channel for how you consumme quotations, this book could be worth 4 or 5 stars for you. I prefer other means of delivery, therefore my 3 stars rating.

Customer Rating: 

I liked this book. It has 352 pages of a wide variety of quotes from a very wide range of people, with about 10 quotes a page. This book isn't like a novel where you can get engrossed by the plot and read on for 3 hours at a time. Instead, you will find yourself picking it up often, to read 20 or 30 quotes and think about the concept each speaker had in mind and how well they expressed it, as well as what it means to you.

The quotes are a mix of the funny, the profound, the unusual. The quotes are from very diverse sources: baseball players, politicians, philosophers, poets, pundits, painters, proverbs, priests, and so on.

Here is a sampling of the shorter quotes, intended to illustrate the variety you'd encounter:
. All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy (Spike Milligan)
. My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of church-going (Aldous Huxley)
. Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone (Pablo Picasso)
. Progress is not created by contented people (Frank Tyger)
. Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience (Cervantes)
. The road to success is always under construction (Arnold Palmer)
. Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure (Earl Wilson)
. When eating a fruit, think of the person who planted the tree (Vietnamese proverb)
. The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes (Tony Blair)
. To light a candle is to cast a shadow (Ursula Le Guin)

Enjoy the quotes as well as the wide variety of sources.

Customer Rating: 

Quotes can open doors into new insights and thinking. Short, profound, and expanding if you want them to be.

"If Ignorance is Bliss, why aren't more people happy," is good for the coffee table. The quotes are OK. Some are well chosen and range from ironic to pithy. Some quotes are from well-known American politicians or current actors and actresses. This leads to being a bit shallow, unless these quotes are pithy. Pithy is what the essence of a good quote is, in my opinion. Quote books are quote books. Good for a guest at your place to dabble with for a short time if you have a have a few minutes to spare.

There is an index at the back of the book to find the author or quotee. Quotes are arranged by topic from A to Z. From quotes on career, courage, women, drinking, music, logic, Xtianity, and marriage, etc. Some recent quotes are included, and it's always good to see new quotes, as we've already read Yogi Berra's too many times.