“To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?”

“The Curse of Knowledge: when we are given knowledge, it is impossible to imagine what it's like to LACK that knowledge.”

“If I already intuitively "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it? The danger, of course, is that what sounds like common sense often isn't.... It's your job, as a communicator, to expose the parts of your message that are uncommon sense.(p.72)”

“As we gain information we are more likely to focus on what we don't know :" Someone who knows the state capitals of 17 of 50 states may be proud of her knowledge. But someone who knows 47 may think of herself as not knowing 3 capitals”

“Knowledge curses us, if we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. And it becomes difficult to share our knowledge with others because we can't readily re-create our listener's state of mind.”

“The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be.”

“We can't unlearn what we already know and there are only two ways to beat the curse, the first is not to learn anything, the second is to transform our ideas.”