Something I’ve long thought true, and which shows up constantly when you look for it, is that people who are abnormally good at one thing tend to be abnormally bad at something else. It’s as if the brain has capacity for only so much knowledge and emotion, and an abnormal skill robs bandwidth from other parts of someone’s personality.

I wonder: Was Newton a genius in spite of being addicted to magic, or was being curious about things that seemed impossible part of what made him so successful?

Imagine a life where almost everything gets better but you never appreciate it because your expectations rise as fast as your circumstances. It’s terrifying, and almost as bad as a world where nothing gets better.

Montesquieu wrote 275 years ago, “If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

the central feature of compounding is that it’s never intuitive how big something can grow from a small beginning.

One is highlighting this book’s premise—to base predictions on how people behave rather than on specific events. Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now is impossible. But predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations, and social persuasion in the sa

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once said that he’s often asked what’s going to change in the next ten years. “I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next ten years?’ ” he said. “And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two.”

Warren said, “Jim, do you know what the bestselling candy bar was in 1962?” “No,” Jim said. “Snickers,” said Warren. “And do you know what the bestselling candy bar is today?” “No,” said Jim. “Snickers,” Warren said. Then silence. That was the end of the conversation. This is a book of short stories about what never changes in a changing world.

Our life is indeed the same as it ever was. . . . The same physiological and psychological processes that have been man’s for hundreds of thousands of years still endure. —Carl Jung