Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual. They fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.

"Plastic moments" are those periods that overlap when the old has gone but the new has not yet arrived and when the course of history is more open to being shaped and steered than any other time.

In a rural society communities are "given" for the individual. Community is a fact, whether family or religion, social class or caste.

In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.

As to the idea that advertising motivates people, remember the Edsel.

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.

Our society has become an employee society.