Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

... they were not really afraid. They were just afraid of being afraid.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

The excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission.

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not, With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.

If we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

The world we could have is so much richer than the world we have settled for.

Extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.

We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.

Understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification—then you learn to value it differently.

No one-not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses-ever makes it alone

Acquaintances, in sort, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.

...mediocre people find their way into positions of authority...because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.

You can’t concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What’s gonna happen if it doesn’t go right?

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

Being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience

Working really hard is what successful people do...