“We ask our brain to stop worrying, stop obsessing, stop dreaming the same scary dreams again and again. But our brain rarely takes requests.”

“… we have bad dreamsbecause our brain is trying to protect us… If we can figure out a way to beat the imaginary monsters … Then the real monsters don’t seem so scary… That’s why we like reading scary stories.”

“Since the moment we met, my wife and I have not stopped kissing. I’m Catholic and she’s Islamic, so there were complications. Throughout the delicate negotiations with our families, our lips did not part for a moment. Eventually they accepted our love, so we married. We walked, tongues tangled, down the aisle. Now after six years of marriage, we are still fused. We had our first child without stopping kissing for the conception, pregnancy or birth. Our lips are four broken scabs, and our chins always covered in blood, but we still never stop. We are far too much in love.”

“Standard economics assumes that we are rational... But, as the results presented in this book (and others) show, we are far less rational in our decision making... Our irrational behaviors arevneither random nor senseless- they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of he basic wiring of our brains.-pg. 239”

“Humankind made these religions; that our brains are capable of doing that is neither something to take too seriously — because we also make poop, and we learned to flush that the fuck down the toilet — but it's also not something to totally disregard.”

“Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.”

“There are some things more important than ourselves - more important than the limits of the present, and the whims of the now. There is a future to build and protect. And if we're going to make that future as reality, we have to stop fighting among ourselves. We have to end dissent whenever we find it. We have to trust one another again.”