“But in both instances, the dissemination of the information diluted its power. As Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once wrote, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”

“As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”

“The gulf between the information we proclaim & the information we know to be true is vast. In other words: we say one thing & do another.”

“Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent--all depending on who wields it and how.”

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation”

“After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.”

“Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.”