We have made it impossible for children to fall very far—and in so doing, we have robbed them of the joys of climbing high.

Entrenched customs represent a social equilibrium, and moving away from that equilibrium is difficult to do on your own.

I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once.

Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out.

We have made it impossible for children to fall very far—and in so doing, we have robbed them of the joys of climbing high.

The up side of down: why failing well is the key to success.

It is a vast, and pervasive, cognitive mistake to assume that people who agree with you (or disagree) do so on the same criteria that you care about.