“At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”

— Charles Evans Hughes

Reported in Justice William O. Douglas, The Court Years (1980), p. 8

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Charles Evans Hughes 34

American judge 1862–1948

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Spoken on hearing German marchers singing war songs. On p. 474 of Alice Calaprice's The Ultimate Quotable Einstein, she lists "we only use 10 percent of our brain" as a quote "misattributed to Einstein", perhaps this is the source of the misquote? Einstein seems to be speaking metaphorically here, not endorsing the myth http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp that science has shown 90 percent of the neurons in our brain lie dormant. And the myth dates back to before this interview, for example the book Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain, edited by Sergio Della Salla, has a chapter by Barry L. Beyerstein titled "Whence Cometh the Myth that We Only Use 10% of our Brains?" which shows on p. 11 an advertisement from the 1929 World Almanac containing the line "There is NO LIMIT to what the human brain can accomplish. Scientists and psychologists tell us we use only about TEN PER CENT of our brain power."
Context: What a betrayal of man's dignity. He uses the highest gift, his mind, only ten percent, and his emotions and instincts ninety percent.

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“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

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Source: Wishing I’d Played the Ponies http://takimag.com/article/wishing_id_played_the_ponies/print#axzz3xNaU2RAk, Taki's Magazine, June 16, 2011.

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Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

Spoken statement (c. 1903); published in Harper's Monthly (September 1932).
Variants:
None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Statement in a press conference (1929), as quoted in Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James D. Newton, p. 24.
Variant forms without early citation: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."
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“If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 7-8.

“At the constitutional level where we work, ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”

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Charles Evans Hughes 34

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