Quote collection
304 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way...We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that - sometimes - we're better off that way."
"The answer is that we are not helpless in the face of our first impressions. They may bubble up from the unconscious - from behind a locked door inside of our brain - but just because something is outside of awareness doesn't mean it's outside of control."
"Arousal leaves us mind-blind."
"Does that mean we should give up? Probably. But there are two issues worth considering. The first is - is it really true that drugs destroy the integrity of the game?"
"The difference isn't resources, it's attitude."
"Activism that challenges the status quo, that attacks deeply rooted problems, is not for the faint of heart."
"I know it sounds hard to believe, but habits laid down by our ancestors persist even after the conditions that created those habits have gone away."
"The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families."
"Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are."
"Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out."
"Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard."
"People are experience-rich and theory-poor."
"Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical lesson of improve, too, and it is also a key to understanding a puzzle of Millennium Challenge: spontaneity isn't random."
"Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them."
"The biggest mistake we make is trying to square the way we feel about something today with the way we felt about it yesterday. You shouldn’t even bother doing it. You should just figure out the way you feel today and if it happens to comply with what you thought before, fine. If it contradicts it, whatever. Life goes on."
"Our unconscious is really good at quick decision-making - it often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and exhaustive ways of thinking."
"I recently talked to an eighteen-year-old - a huge FIFA fan - and realized that he spends more time playing the FIFA video game than he does watching actual FIFA games."
"There’s this powerful phrase in the legal world, “Difficult cases make bad law.” The exception is the difficult case. You can’t generalize them by definition. So although they are fascinating, they don’t solve any problem because they’re so one of a kind."
"We vary greatly in the natural advantages that we've been given. The world's not fair"
"I interviewed one of the most powerful lawyers in the world and he told me, "At the time, it was the worst thing in the world not to be able to get a job at a fancy law firm, but it's the greatest thing that ever happened in my life." It was a humble acknowledgment of how forces much larger than himself shaped his career. I really wanted to bring that point home."