The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.

After a crisis we tell ourselves we understand why it happened and maintain the illusion that the world is understandable. In fact, we should accept the world is incomprehensible much of the time.

If people can construct a simple and coherent story, they will feel confident regardless of how well grounded it is in reality.

We can't live in a state of perpetual doubt, so we make up the best story possible and we live as if the story were true.

The brains of humans contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news.

People are very good [at] thinking about agents. The mind is set really beautifully to think about agents. Agents have traits. Agents have behaviors. We understand agents. We form global impression of their personalities. We are really not very good at remembering sentences where the subject of the sentence is an abstract notion.

The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than your own.