For a hot-shot CEO taking over a troubled company, mass firings are the ultimate quick fix, the accounting equivalent of crack: cheap, easy to score, instantly gratifying, and highly addictive.

The first and most important step is to realize that, as my mother used to say, fearlessness isn't the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear. It's not that you never have fear, but that you don't let your fears stop you.

America being behind France in upward mobility is a little bit like France being behind America in Croissants and Afternoon Sex.

The average smartphone user checks his or her device every six and a half minutes.

I think people are attracted to The Huffington Post's blend of up-to-the-second news and thoughtful opinion, delivered with an attitude. Plus, I think they enjoy that we cover so many different things - from politics and entertainment to style and satire. There is always something interesting to read and think about - and even to laugh at.

Market forces have no intrinsically moral direction, which is why, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Ethics should precede economics. But it doesn't have to. . . . We know this because we've seen the results of capitalism without conscience: the pollution of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; the endangerment of workers; and the sale of dangerous products - from cars to toys to drugs. All in pursuit of ever-greater profits.

Life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen.