“The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y.”

“If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut”

“When people in the company start asking questions like @But how can we say "X" when we do "Y"? more than anything else this is a tip-off that a strategic inflection point may very well be in the making”

“Why' is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.The alphabet does not go 'A B C D What? When? How?' but it does go 'V W X Why? Z.”

“There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent “what if” scenarios--what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?--because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency.”

“No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer.”