“The ability to expend energy, especially in the form of other people's labour, in non-utilitarian ways, is the most basic and universally understood symbol of power.”

“When we express appreciation, it means that we recognize the value of the other person's contribution to our relationship/ Each of us expends our energy and abilities in ways that benefit our relationship.”

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”

“...the basic stuff of the universe, at its core, is looking like a kind of pure energy that is malleable to human intention and expectation in a way that defies our old mechanistic model of the universe--as though our expectation itself causes our energy to flow out into the world and affect other energy systems.”

“Pride is yet again in the way of our mind’s ability to accept that we may not be the most intelligent and advanced people in the universe or on Earth since it was formed along with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.”

“The basic idea here is that for most people will power is a limited resource: if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, will power is like a muscle: overuse temporarily exhausts it.”