Endlessly amused by people's minds.

There is a huge wave of interest in happiness among researchers. There is a lot of happiness coaching. Everybody would like to make people happier.

Lucky risk takers use hindsight to reinforce their feeling that their gut is very wise. Hindsight also reinforces others' trust in that individual's gut.

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.

The amount of success it takes for leaders to become overconfident isn't terribly large.

Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion.

Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders - not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks.