When you're in pain, tomorrow doesn't exist - just the pain - and the only thing that you want in the world is for it to go away.

If you get people to feel that they are putting something, that they are creating it and so on, their love for the project would increase. The more something is yours, the more you're willing to invest in it.

Ownership is not limited to material things. It can also apply to points of view. Once we take ownership of an idea - whether it’s about politics or sports - what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology - rigid and unyielding.

If you ever go bar hopping, who do you want to take with you? You want a slightly uglier version of yourself. Similar ... but slightly uglier.

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

Because cheating is easier when we can justify our behavior, people often cheat in small amounts: We can come up with an excuse for stealing Post-It notes, but it is much more difficult to come up with an excuse for taking $10,000 from petty cash.

We have very strong intuitions about all kinds of things — our own ability, how the economy works, how we should pay school teachers. But unless we start testing those intuitions, we’re not going to do better.