Organizations may be better able to tame optimism than individuals are.

If you're going to be unreligious, it's likely going to be due to reflecting on it and finding some things that are hard to believe.

When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty.

I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success: I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers.

Some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them. And that happens to be the case even with memories that are not true.

Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It's deliberate.