Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

..... it would be interesting to find out what goes on in that moment when someone looks at you and draws all sorts of conclusions.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.

Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.

In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.

Emotion is contagious.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. (150)

We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.

If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.

Our first impressions are generated by our experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions . . . by changing the experiences that comprise those impressions.

When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.

There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.

Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation

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.

There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.

Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness.

We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken.

Arousal leaves us mind-blind.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.

Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.

There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.

We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

The 10,000hr rule is a definite key in success

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.

Working really hard is what successful people do...

Being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.

Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!

You can’t concentrate on doing anything if you are thinking, “What’s gonna happen if it doesn’t go right?

...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.

Acquaintances, in sort, represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.

No one-not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses-ever makes it alone

Any fool can spend money. But to earn it and save it and defer gratification—then you learn to value it differently.

Understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.

We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.

Extreme visual clarity, tunnel vision, diminished sound, and the sense that time is slowing down. this is how the human body reacts to extreme stress.

The world we could have is so much richer than the world we have settled for.

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.

If we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, then we can control rapid cognition

You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not, With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.