We have the kind of self-made-man myth, which says that super-successful people did it themselves.

The key to good decision making is not knowledge... It's whether our work fulfills us.

If there is one thing I learned by reading Epstein's "The Sports Gene" it is that world-class athletes are, by definition, abnormal: that is, the kind of person capable of competing at that level is necessarily very different from the rest of us physiologically. They are outliers.

Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.

Where they come from matters. They're products of particular places and environments.

It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.

There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.