I think we could get people to both be more productive and happier. We're less productive as individuals. We're less productive as companies, and we're more miserable.

But suppose we are nothing more than the sum of our first, naive, random behaviors. What then?

If we all make systematic mistakes in our decisions, then why not develop new strategies, tools, and methods to help us make better decisions and improve our overall well-being? That's exactly the meaning of free lunches- the idea that there are tools, methods, and policies that can help all of us make better decisions and as a consequence achieve what we desire-pg. 241

When parents have college savings accounts for their kids, their kids show higher social and cognitive performance.

Marketing is all about providing information that will heighten someone's anticipated and real pleasure.

The bad news is that ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes. Ignoring gets you a whole way out there. The good news is that by simply looking at something that somebody has done, scanning it and saying "Uh huh," that seems to be quite sufficient to dramatically improve people's motivations.

When it comes to the mental world, when we design things like health care and retirement and stock markets, we somehow forget the idea that we are limited. I think that if we understood our cognitive limitations in the same way that we understand our physical limitations … we could design a better world.