Women believe that men are, in a sense, defective versions of women, Men believe that women are defective versions of men. Both genders are trapped in adelusion that their personal viewpoints are univ...
The surest way to identify those who won’t succeed at weight loss is that they tend to say things like My goal is to lose ten pounds. Weight targets often work in the short run. But if you need willpo...
The rest of the universe is like the coin. The events ofthe past appear to cause the present, but every time we popback into existence we are subject to a new set of probabilities.Literally anything c...
The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness. That might sound selfish, but it’s not. Only a sociopath or a hermit can find happiness thr...
The main difference between marketing and fraud is that criminals have to pay for their own alcohol.
The common worldview, shared by most humans, is that there is one objective reality, and we humans can understand that reality through a rigorous application of facts and reason. This view of the worl...
Successwise, you’re better off being good at two complementary skills than being excellent at one.
In most groups the craziest person is in control. It starts because no one wants the problems that come from pissing off a crazy person. It’s just smarter and easier sometimes to let the crazy person...
Everything that motivates living creatures is based onsome weakness or flaw. Hunger motivates animals. Lustmotivates animals. Fear and pain motivate animals. A Godwould have none of those impulses. Hu...
Every other question has an answer to why. Onlyprobability is inexplicable.
Conversation is more than the sum of the words. It isalso a way of signaling the importance of another person byshowing your willingness to give that person your rarestresource: time. It is a way of c...
Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, tells us that people become unhappy if they have too many options in life. The problem with options is that choosing any path can leave you plagued wit...
Another huge advantage of learning as much as you can in different fields is that the more concepts you understand, the easier it is to learn new ones. Imagine explaining to an extraterrestrial visito...
Your inability to see other possibilities and your lack of vocabularyare your brain’s limits, not the universe’s.
When politicians tell lies, they know the press will call them out. They also know it doesn’t matter. Politicians understand that reason will never have much of a role in voting decisions. A lie that...
What does it mean to be yourself? he asked. If itmeans to do what you think you ought to do, then you’redoing that already. If it means to act like you’re exemptfrom society’s influence, that’s the wo...
Unhappiness that is caused by too much success is a high-class problem. That’s the sort of unhappiness people work all of their lives to get. If you find yourself there, and I hope you do, you’ll find...
The job isn't done until you've blamed someone for the parts that went wrong.
My definition of happiness is that it’s a feeling you get when your body chemistry is producing pleasant sensations in your mind.
Happiness has more to do with where you are heading than where you are.