...mediocre people find their way into positions of authority...because when it comes to even the most important positions, our selection decisions are a good deal less rational than we think.

People who are busy doing things - as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops -don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them.

My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.

Emotion is contagious.

Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.

[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite.