“After he wrote The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz got fervent amens from European governments as well as individual readers for insisting that the management of your focus has become one of decision-laden modernity's major challenges. Many behavioral economists and social psychologists also share his concern about what he calls "the consequences of mis-attention.”

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

“He wrote as if he were the reader. It was also how he kept his writing from becoming too cute, which is to say, about him not the subject. Rook was a journalist but strove to be a storyteller, one who let his subjects speak for themselves and stayed out of their way as much as possible.”

“Alex Rodriguez seemed not to fit in with the rest of his Yankee teammates. For instance, he wanted a clubhouse attendant personally assigned to him, when there were four or five for the whole team. Seeing the rift between him and the rest of the team and how Rodriguez's major focus on how HE was perceived, Joe Torre suggested in the individual meeting that Rodriguez at least get his own coffee rather than send someone to get it for him. Later that day, Alex Rodriguez made a point of telling the manager that he got his own coffee – drawing attention to himself, even in what was meant to be just an example of how he could fit in with normal behavior.”

“Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly what he is, and from this point of view it seems positively absurd to go on talking about the value or meaning of the individual.”

“Private choices are not private; they all have public consequences...Our society is the sum total of what millions of individuals do in their private lives. That sum total of private behavior has worldwide public consequences of enormous magnitude. There are no completely private choices.”