“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies? The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance. Just as the “cheep-cheep” sound of turkey chicks triggered an automatic mothering response from maternal turkeys—even when it emanated from a stuffed polecat—so, too, did the word “because” trigger an automatic compliance response”

“the automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single “cheep-cheep” noise.”

“To make an excuse sidesteps responsibility. But to make a choice automatically assumes responsibility.”

“They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first.The first is, ”Here I am, here I am, here I am.”The second is, ”So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are”

“People like to say love is unconditional, but it's not, and even if it was unconditional, it's still never free. There's always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won't be happy unless you are ... I just don't want that responsibility.”

“Our mind takes an inventory of past events and uses them to project the probability of success in the future. Depending on the information it gathers, we either move forward—or thefear response is triggered and forward progress is circumvented. Page 48”