The obligation to receive reduces our ability to choose whom we wish to be indebted to and puts that power in the hands of others.

A few years ago, the Bose Acoustics Corporation had a new product, the Bose Wave Music System. And their ad campaign for it was not successful until they changed one thing. At the top of the ad they said, "Hear what you've been missing." And that caused the skyrocketing of the interest in purchasing of the product. Why? Because with something new, people are uncertain, and when they are uncertain, they want to avoid losses.

Our best evidence of what people truly feel and believe comes less from their words than from their deeds.

At the beginning of each lecture I say, 'Here's a set of events unexplainable by common sense, and I promise you'll be able to solve this mystery at the end of class.'

Pre-suasion is the practice of getting people sympathetic to your message before they experience it.

Pre-suasion is the practice of getting people sympathetic to your message before they experience it. It's the ability to cause people to have something at the top of their consciousness that makes them receptive to your message that's yet to come.

The joy is not in experiencing a scarce commodity but in possessing it.