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.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.

In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

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.

I worry that track is going to enter into an impossibly complicated stage, where our understanding of the complexities of human physiology - and our ability to accentuate and exploit them - is going to make the notion of pure competition impossible.

Achievement is talent plus preparation

People are experience-rich and theory-poor.