It's not about how smart you are. It's about your values.Collection: Smart
Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being JewishCollection: Numbers
For every romantic possiblity, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word capable of extinguishing it.Collection: Love
You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.Collection: Social
Lands' End has undergone three major changes over the past couple of decades. The first was the introduction of an 800 number, in 1978; the second was express delivery, in 1994; and the third was the introduction of a Web site, in 1995. The first two innovations cut the average transaction time-the time between the moment of ordering and the moment the goods are received-from three weeks to four days. The third innovation has cut the transaction time from four days to, well, four days.Collection: Couple
The first person who throws the rock is a lot more radical than a hundredth person.By the time the riot has attracted a hundred people, you don't have to be nearly as much of a daredevil or a hothead or committed or any of those things to want to engage in a riot.Collection: Rocks
The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all by themselves. But in fact they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot. It makes a difference where and when we grew up.Collection: Kings
Whenever we have something that we are good at--something we care about--that experience and passion fundamentally change the nature of our first impressions.Collection: Passion
Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas.Collection: Ideas
Radio stations have constructed a narrow door[way], and that's because they don't understand how complex and paradoxical our snap judgments are. It's hard to measure new songs.Collection: Song
There are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgments and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.Collection: Stress
People are experience-rich and theory-poor. I help people organize / make sense of their experiences.Collection: People
Shortly after the birth control pill was approved for public distribution, one woman wrote to John Rock, its inventor, "You should be afraid to meet your maker." Rock, despite being Catholic replied, "My dear Madam, in my faith, we are taught that the Lord is with us always. When my time comes, there will be no need for introductions."Collection: Rocks
We tend to credit those who create an idea, not those who perfect it, forgetting that it is often only in the perfection of an idea that true progress occurs. Putting sixty-four transistors on a chip allowed people to dream of the future. Putting four million transistors on a chip actually gave them the future.Collection: Dream
our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions.Collection: Lying
being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experienceCollection: Long
I would say first of all, anyone who wants to challenge the status quo always gets that response. Ninety percent of the time, that's just bull. That's just the way in which people choose to prop up their own privilege or their own particular position. So mostly I shrug it off.Collection: People
Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better!Collection: Country
You may hate Hillary Clinton and you may have good reason for hating Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton is one person who even if she's elected will be gone one day and you still have the task of keeping American democracy going.Collection: Hate
Trump is an innovator who has shown how out of step the political establishment was. Which I think, probably, in the long term will be healthy. We have to figure out how to reinvigorate our political institutions and he's demonstrating to us the urgency of that task.Collection: Thinking
Every cop will tell you that their real job is being a social worker. That's what they do all day. The large majority of police officers in this country never even draw their gun, let alone fire it. They do conflict resolution, right? And if that's their job, why do they need to look like they're an occupying force?Collection: Country
So the first task of a police force is not to fight crime and enforce the law. It is to establish legitimacy with the law-abiding citizenry and then fight crime and enforce the law.Collection: Fighting
And my advice for college graduates is don't reflexively give money to your alma mater, something particular to Americans that I find extraordinary. Take Princeton, for example - it has more money on a per capita basis than any educational institution in the history of educational institutions. There is no scenario where it can spend all the money its endowment generates every year. If there is anyone who gives a single dollar to Princeton, they have completely lost their mind. I will say that without reservation.Collection: Educational
There are lots of issues more important than where billionaires donate their money.Collection: Important
The religious paradigm and the science fiction paradigm are different. Apologies to science fiction fans, but the paradigm there is to create a new world and describe it with a kind of specificity that we describe the world we inhabit. Religiosity, on the other hand, does none of that.Collection: Religious
Science fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"Collection: Annoyed
Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. 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.Collection: Mean
We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.Collection: Teacher
The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story.Collection: Business
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: People
Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.Collection: Tough Times
[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.Collection: Thinking
What is learned out of hard work and trial is inevitably more powerful than what is learned easily.Collection: Powerful
Achievement is talent plus preparationCollection: Success
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.Collection: Success
The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.Collection: Beauty
When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.Collection: Trying
The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.Collection: People
No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.Collection: Success
Incompetence annoys me. Overconfidence terrifies me.Collection: Annoying
When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters-first and foremost-how they behave.Collection: People
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.Collection: Giving Up
Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer ... But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable ... They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of.Collection: Creativity
Through embracing the diversity of humans beings, we will find a sure way to true happiness.Collection: Diversity
Success is not a function of individual talent. It's the steady accumulation of advantages. It's bound up in so many other broader circumstantial, environmental, historical, and cultural factors.Collection: Historical
The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families.Collection: Smart
Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.Collection: Powerful
If you look at the careers of great entrepreneurs and you look at the moment they took their plunge, the plunge is rarely a great financial or material risk, it’s a social risk. At the moment they started their new businesses, everyone around them said ‘you’re an idiot’.Collection: Careers