If the box contains a diamond, I desire to believe that the box contains a diamond; If the box does not contain a diamond, I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond; Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
For an instant Harry imagined his own Mum and Dad in Azkaban with the Dementors sucking out their life, draining away the happy memories of their love for him. Just for an instant, before his imagination blew a fuse and called an emergency shutdown and told him never to imagine that again.
Sometimes Harry thought the deepest split in his personality wasn’t anything to do with his dark side; rather it was the divide between the altruistic and forgiving Abstract Reasoning Harry, versus the frustrated and angry Harry In The Moment.
Stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
But I really am Ravenclaw, you know, not Slytherin. I don’t want to rule the universe. I just think it could be more sensibly organised.
Nestled up against the wall, where Professor Quirrell had stumbled, glistened the crushed remains of a beautiful blue beetle.
That is not how it works in Ravenclaw, Draco! If you have to push someone into a wall it means your brain is too weak to beat them the right way and everyone in Ravenclaw knows that -.
I’m not a psychopath, I’m just very creative.
Hey, Draco, you know what I bet is even better for becoming friends than exchanging secrets? Committing murder.
The golden coins might have been his, but they were still stolen – self-stolen? Auto-thieved?
It’s okay to bribe people with books, right?
When you walk past a bookshop you haven’t visited before, you have to go in and look around. That’s the family rule.
And I know that I’d just make myself unhappy by comparing that reality to... something perfect that I built up in my imagination.
And I suspect, Mr. Potter, that if I leave you alone for two months with your schoolbooks, even without a wand, I will return to this house only to find a crater billowing purple smoke, a depopulated city surrounding it and a plague of flaming zebras terrorising what remains of England.
You’d think there’d be some kind of more dramatic mental event associated with updating on an observation of infinitesimal probability -” Harry stopped himself. Mum, the witch, and even his Dad were giving him that look again. “I mean, with finding out that everything I believe is false.
Reality is always lawful,” said Harry, “even if we don’t know the law.
The most dangerous truth a Confessor knows is that the rules of society are just consensual hallucinations. Choosing to wake up from the dream means choosing to end your life.
You do realize that your brain is literally hardwired to generate error signals when it sees other human-shaped objects stating a different opinion from yourself.