Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because, that's the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters-first and foremost-how they behave.

Success is not a function of individual talent. It's the steady accumulation of advantages. It's bound up in so many other broader circumstantial, environmental, historical, and cultural factors.

The best example of how impossible it will be for Major League Baseball to crack down on steroids is the fact that baseball and the media are still talking about the problem as "steroids.

The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.

Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.