"The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little."

"If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do."

"This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution."

"Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me."

"A reliable way of making people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth."

"The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained."

"Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed."

"Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery."

"The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches."

"Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance."

"Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it"

"A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact."

"He is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty."

"Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see."

"I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney."

"Prudence keeps life safe, but it does not often make it happy."

"Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor."

"It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination."

"A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect."

"Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off."

"To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly."

"There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved."

"Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise."

"Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise."