Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.

The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.

There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for for maximum effect.

If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money.

I don't think people are averse to thinking about things in a deep way, but we have limited time and opportunity to think about things in a deep way. I think that's why there is an appetite for non-fiction - it gives people the opportunity to reexamine ordinary experience and be smarter about it.

The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.