As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect.

If you play an audiotape of a yawn to blind people, they'll yawn too.

I interviewed one of the most powerful lawyers in the world and he told me, "At the time, it was the worst thing in the world not to be able to get a job at a fancy law firm, but it's the greatest thing that ever happened in my life." It was a humble acknowledgment of how forces much larger than himself shaped his career. I really wanted to bring that point home.

Innovation-the heart of the knowledge economy-is fundamentally social.

All artists have to do that at a certain point. This shift that has to happen between the initial moment of creation and then the consideration of what has been created.

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

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.