"

The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.

"

The law (of least effort) asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding c...more

"

Jumping to conclusions is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake acceptable. Jumping to conclusi...more

"

The test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact.

"

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do. My Princeton colleague Danny Opp...more

"

The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people's mistakes than our own.

"

The world makes much less sense than you think. The coherence comes mostly from the way your mind works.

"

Characteristics of System 1: • generates impressions, feelings, and inclinations; when endorsed by System 2 these become beliefs, attitudes, and inten...more

"

...the characters are useful because of some quirks of our minds, yours and mine. A sentence is understood more easily if it describes what an agent (...more

"

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian ...more