Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions... by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.

Instinct is the gift of experience. The first question you have to ask yourself is, 'On what basis am I making a judgment?' ... If you have no experience, then your instincts aren't any good.

The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world.

People are experience-rich and theory-poor.

Poverty is not deprivation, it is isolation.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong. Crime didn't keep soaring in the 1990s, money alone doesn't win elections, and - surprise - drinking eight glasses of water a day has never actually been shown to do a thing for your health. Conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done.

Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.