When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.

Many ideas happen to us. We have intuition, we have feeling, we have emotion, all of that happens, we don't decide to do it. We don't control it.

I'm not a great believer in self-help.

We deeply want to be led by people who know what they're doing and who don't have to think about it too much.

Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.

People tend to assess the relative importance of issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory—and this is largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media. Frequently mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their view of what is currently on the public’s mind. It is no accident that authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media. Because public interest is most easily aroused by dramatic events and by celebrities, media feeding frenzies are common

Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.