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Jeffrey Kluger

Jeffrey Kluger Quotes

Writer

Jeffrey Kluger is an American writer born in 1954. He is known for his in-depth reporting on science, technology, and cultural phenomena, and has won numerous awards for his work. Kluger has served as an editor and columnist for several prominent media outlets, including Time magazine and Scientific American. His writing style is characterized by clarity, wit, and insight.

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All Ifs People Sibling Kids Children Knows May Way Wells Hard

Famous Jeffrey Kluger Quotes

“Older fatherhood isn't all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something who's just getting started.”

Men Years Kids Age Middle Twenties Patient Rate More Time Fatherhood Middle Aged Testosterone Time And Money Getting Started Twenty Somethings

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong - which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed; they just fail to act on that knowledge.”

Knows Reason Differences Cases Failing Succeed Criminals Insanity Psychopath

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The golden child may be the oldest one, unless it's the youngest. It may be the toughest one, unless it's the most sensitive. It's not even necessary that Mom and Dad have the same favorite - and typically they don't.”

May Children Mom Dad Golden Sensitive Mom And Dad Golden Child

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There's plenty to read about keeping your sanity while raising children, but it's all common-sense stuff about task division and taking breaks and the relentlessly repeated magic of date night with your spouse. What's missing is some 'tude.”

Children Night Stuff Common Break Magic Missing Tasks Common Sense Plenty Division Sanity Spouse Raising Children Taking A Break Date Night

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering.”

People Ifs Suffering Causes Effects Gun Tragedy Rewards Rational Injury Incidents Cause And Effect Taxi Curb Cab Randomness Pedestrians Bystanders Taxi Cabs

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“A jellyfish is little more than a pulsating bell, a tassel of trailing tentacles and a single digestive opening through which it both eats and excretes - as regrettable an example of economy of design as ever was.”

Littles Economy Example Design Opening Bells Tentacles Jellyfish Tassels

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“As MBA professors endlessly tell their students, companies do best when they stick to what they do well. There's a reason Apple doesn't make blenders. There's a reason Haagen-Dazs doesn't sell meat. And there's a reason drug companies should focus on saving and improving lives - not jeopardizing them.”

Should Wells Reason Company Focus Students Drug Sells Sticks Saving Meat Apples Professors Improving Mba Blenders Drug Companies

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.”

Sports Known Issues Clear Player Risk Football Becoming Behavior Suicide Mental Health Criminals Former League Dementia Health Issues Criminal Behavior

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“At the root of the shy temperament is a deep fear of social judgment, one so severe it can sometimes be crippling. Introverted people don't worry unduly about whether they'll be found wanting, they just find too much socializing exhausting and would prefer either to be alone or in the company of a select few people.”

People Sometimes Found Social Company Worry Too Much Judgment Roots Shy Severe Temperament Select Exhausting Introverted Socializing

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up.”

May Has Beens Ends School Wealth Talent Behavior Opposites Athlete Covered Unusual Bats Incidents Spectrum Exhibits Sinking Prestige Overlooked Suspended Bad Behavior Free Throw Covered Up

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat.”

Kids Turns Three Hours Break One Thing Becoming Budgets Meals Preparing Savvy

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.”

Littles Stills Age Values President Hurt Special Paper Credit Cards Dirty Digital Plastic Starters Shoppers Handing Over Cashiers Debit Debit Cards

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Everybody loves to spend money at least some of the time - because everybody loves the stuff you can buy with it. The key to the pleasure level of any transaction is the balance between the pain of the payment and the reward of the purchased object.”

Pain Stuff Pleasure Levels Objects Keys Balance Rewards Payment Transactions

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth - and perhaps even in the womb - to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds.”

Humans Different Moments Language Sound Birth Combination Womb Crude Linguists

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them.”

Humans Courses Members Abuse Admire Cooks Our Family Beast Pet Companion Household Cages Family Members Laborers Pests

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore with an extremely high concentration of Jewish families - where the Levys and Cohens in the high school yearbook went on for pages, where I could count far more temples than I ever could churches. Anti-Semitism, in our cultural biodome, was mostly an abstract concept.”

School Church Grew Grew Up Pages High School Concepts Abstract Temples Concentration Suburbs Anti Semitism Baltimore Yearbook Jewish Family High School Yearbook

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“I was born in the U.S., my wife was born in Mexico and emigrated here when she was in college, and my daughters were born in New York City. That makes them passport-carrying, natural-born, eligible-to-run-for-president Americans. But they're also Mexicans and they like that just fine.”

Running Mother President Born Natural Cities Wife New York College Fine Daughter My Wife My Daughter New York City Mexico Passports

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Identical twins are ideal lab specimens for studying the difference between learned and inherited traits since they come from the womb preloaded with matching genetic operating systems. Any meaningful differences in their behaviors or personalities are thus likely to have been acquired, not innate.”

Has Beens Differences Study Personality Behavior Ideals Meaningful Traits Twins Womb Innate Identical Labs Matching Operating Systems Identical Twin

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used.”

Thinking Way Used Grows Stronger Best Way Muscles Traits Psychics Willpower Atrophy

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only - or even the biggest - part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope, that means 86% is dependent on raw talent, fickle business cycles, the quality of the product you're selling, and often pure, dumb luck.”

Ifs Mean Quality Too Much Talent Products Pure Succeed Luck Productivity Selling Dumb Dependent Cycles Fickle Dumb Luck Raw Talent

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Marketers have long known that a name can make all the difference when you're trying to move the merch. The kiwifruit was once the Chinese gooseberry, after all - at least until the produce peddlers wised up - and the Chilean sea bass was once the singularly unappetizing Patagonian toothfish.”

Trying Long Moving Names Differences Known Sea Produce Chinese Bass Marketers Peddler Chileans

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Never mind what you've heard. Halle Berry was not the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was actually the 74th white one. And never mind all this talk about America electing its first black President; Barack Obama is actually the 44th white man to hold the job.”

Men Mind Firsts Jobs America Winning Black President White Heard Actresses Barack Awards White Man Black Women Academy President Barack Obama Berries Academy Awards

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?”

Ifs Rational Pet Hats Shopping Sneakers

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely.”

Ifs Kind Stories Seems Rooms Special Identity Horror Errors Patient Terror Legs Tales Knees Replaced Occasional Headlines Complication Horror Stories Operating Room

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Part-black generally means all-black in Americans' minds. Just as part-Asian or part-Hispanic or part-anything-else usually puts individuals in those minority-groups' camps.”

Mind Mean Individual Black Groups Minorities Camps Asian Hispanic All Black Minority Groups

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Paul McCartney had a baby when he was 61; Rod Stewart was 66; Rupert Murdoch was a stunning 72. Not only does that mean they'll have less stamina than the average dad, that means they'll, well, check out a lot sooner too.”

Wells Mean Doe Baby Dad Average Checks Stunning Stamina

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Scarily, football helmets, which do a fine job of protecting against scalp laceration and skull fracture, do little to prevent concussions and may even exacerbate them, since even as the brain is rattling around inside the skull, the head is rattling around inside the helmet.”

May Littles Jobs Brain Football Fine Skulls Helmet Fracture Concussions

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Spare a thought for the poor introverts among us. In a world of party animals and glad-handers, they're the ones who stand by the punch bowl. In a world of mixers and pub crawls, they prefer to stay home with a book. Everywhere around them, cell phones ring and e-mails chime and they just want a little quiet.”

World Want Littles Book Home Animal Poor Party Quiet Phones Rings Glad Cells Mail Bowls Spares Introvert Cell Phone Pubs Chimes Party Animal

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold.”

Feels Wells Different Pain House Individual Car Depends Very Good Spending Brands Sandwiches Threshold Brand New Ham Physical Pain Pain Threshold Small Family

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Tamerlan Tsarnaev is telling no tales. The older of the two brothers who committed the Boston Marathon bombings was likely the one who planned the attack, but when he died in a shootout with police just days after the blasts, his thoughts and motivations vanished with him.”

Two Motivation Brother Died Police Committed Tales Boston Marathon Blast Bombing Two Brothers Boston Marathon

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The best you can sometimes do is learn to take a breath, count to ten and simply accept that try as you might, no, your husband will never, ever learn not to drop a wet towel on the bed. That acceptance too counts as resolving a fight.”

Trying Sometimes Might Fighting Accepting Acceptance Bed Ten Husband Breaths Wet Your Husband Towels

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The brain sits snugly inside the skull, but it's not a completely flush fit - there is still a layer of fluid between bone and soft tissue that serves as a natural shock absorber. Some shocks, however, can't be absorbed, and when the head gets clobbered too hard, the brain can twist or torque or rattle around inside its skeletal casing.”

Stills Hard Natural Brain Fit Bones Shock Layers Twists Fluid Skulls Tissues Torque Shock Absorber

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The death of anti-gay hate speech is no doubt being hastened by the head-spinning speed with which gays as a group - to say nothing of gay marriage - are becoming an unremarkable and even quite traditional parts of American life.”

Hate Doubt Groups Becoming Gay Speech Speed Traditional No Doubt Gay Marriage Spinning American Life Hate Speech Anti Gay

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves.”

Dies Games Sports Brain Study Player Athlete Available League

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The mind and the body are inextricably entwined, and rarely are their inseparability clearer than when we're under some kind of mental pressure. The moment we start trying to learn a new skill, make a decision or otherwise think on our feet, our nervous system reacts - with accelerated pulse rate, increased respiration, even sweating.”

Thinking Trying Mind Kind Moments Body Decision Feet Skills Pressure Rate Nervous Pulse Nervous System Sweating Entwined New Skills Respiration

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.”

Mind Looks Language Brain Influence Particular Behavior Scientist Structure Polyglots

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“The vexing thing about human behavior is that when we say we know we should do something, we really and truly do know it. It's hard to be 50 lbs. overweight or smoke a pack a day or feel miserable every moment you spend at work and not understand in a deep and primal way that change is in order - and that in some cases it could even save your life.”

Knows Way Feels Should Humans Hard Moments Order Cases Behavior Miserable Smoke Packs Human Behavior Primal Overweight

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There are a lot of downsides to being male. We age faster and die younger. But give us this: we're lifetime baby-making machines. Women's reproductive abilities start to wane when they're as young as 35. Men? We're good to go pretty much till we're dead.”

Men Giving Age Young Dies Ability Baby Machines Lifetime Males Faster

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There are a lot of ways to make people not like you, but one of the most powerful - if least fair - is to be really, really successful. Nobody resents the guy who just lost his job. But the guy whose Internet start-up made him a billionaire at 25? That's a whole different kettle of envy.”

People Ifs Way Made Different Whole Jobs Guy Lost Powerful Successful Like You Internet Fairs Envy Most Powerful Billionaire Resent Kettles

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There are popular celebrities, there are unpopular celebrities and then there are the walking dead. You know the walking dead when you see them: they look like Mel Gibson, still striving for drunken charm in an L.A. County mug shot, after getting picked up on a DWI charge that included anti-semitic slurs directed at the police.”

Knows Looks Stills Walking Shots Police Strive Charm County Mug Anti Semitic Walking Dead Slurs

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language.”

May Mean Language Term Conversation English Language Linguistics

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There's a deep-freeze of sorts for all good intentions - a place that you store your plans to make changes in your life when you know you're not going to make them at all.”

Knows Plans Intention Stores Making Changes Freeze Good Intentions

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There's a sort of sibling moratorium when you're establishing yourself as an adult. So much of your energy has to be focused on other things like work and kids. But when people become more settled, siblings tend to regroup because now you're building a new extended family.”

People Kids Energy Building Adults Focused Sibling Extended Family

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There's no one place a virus goes to die - but that doesn't make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out.”

Way Humans Long Done Dies Victory Disease Down And Human History Wipe Viruses Public Health Demise Hunted Viral

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“There's only one thing harder than living in a home with an adolescent - and that's being an adolescent. The moodiness, the volatility, the wholesale lack of impulse control, all would be close to clinical conditions if they occurred at another point in life. In adolescence, they're just part of the behavioral portfolio.”

Ifs Home Would Be One Thing Conditions Harder Impulse Adolescence Portfolios Clinicals Wholesale Volatility Points In Life Impulse Control Moodiness

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed.”

Young Growing Environmental Vulnerable Smoke Fixed Damage Mature Immature Tissues Mercury Toxins Secondhand Smoke

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“We are all born with an innate understanding of interpersonal equity - the idea that if you lend me your rake today, I'll respond in kind when you come to borrow my shovel tomorrow. Or nearly all of us are born with that. Psychopaths aren't.”

Ifs Kind Ideas Today Understanding Born Tomorrow Equity Innate Psychopath Shovels Rakes Interpersonal

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“What makes spinal-cord injuries as devastating as they are is that everything about them plays out in absolutes: they are instantaneous, utterly disabling and horribly permanent.”

Play Absolutes Permanent Injury Cords Instantaneous Spinal Cord Spinal Cord Injuries

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble.”

Ifs Two Hard Kids Age Girl Parent Boys Trouble Sweet Agree Spots Two Things Civilized Wilder

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

“When our culture shifts, it tends to overcorrect, throwing out everything associated with an era we've moved past, rather than saving what was good and combining it with what is new.”

Past Culture Moved Saving Eras Throwing Combining

Author:Jeffrey Kluger

About the Author

Born: 1954
Known for: Writer
Quotes: 110

Related Topics

Ifs People Sibling Kids Children Knows May Way Wells Hard

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

The Sibling Effect: What the Bonds Among Brothers and Sisters Reveal About UsRelated source material

Simplexity: the simple rules of a complex worldRelated source material

The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed--in Your WorldRelated source material

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