“Reality begins to emerge only when we set aside our tendency to think in clean categories and realize that almost all things exist on a continuum. Along that continuum, answers change depending on time and context. An answer that’s closer to right today could be closer to wrong tomorrow.”
Source: Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary
“If you can let contradictory thoughts dance with each other without your head exploding, they’ll produce a symphony brimming with additional music—in the form of new ideas—far superior to the original.
When you adopt this mindset, you gain the magic of perspective and see through the smoke and mirrors created by one-dimensional stories.
In the end, there’s so much beauty in complexity. A world of multitudes is far more interesting—and accurate—than a world of certitudes.”
Source: Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary
“It took the most trivial of distinctions for the participants to divide themselves into “us” and “them.” Simply telling people that they belonged to one group and not the other was sufficient to trigger loyalty toward their own group and bias against the other.”
Source: Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary
“Tribalism becomes dangerous when it turns rivals into enemies, when it suppresses diverse thinking, and when it pushes individuals to do things they wouldn’t do on their own.
This type of dangerous tribalism thrives in a sea of disconnected people looking for belonging. And who doesn’t crave belonging these days? We are disconnected from our neighbors, disconnected from nature, disconnected from animals, disconnected from the universe, and disconnected from most things that make us human.
Tribes are the magnet that attracts the metal of our craving to belong. They assure us that we’re right and morally superior. They force us into a different reality where it becomes impossible to see—let alone comprehend—another worldview. We become “the Few, the Proud, the More or Less Constantly Appalled at Everyone Else,” as David Foster Wallace put it.”
Source: Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary
“Over time, the tribal identity becomes our identity. Once identity and tribe fuse, we let our tribe determine what’s appropriate for us to read, watch, say, and think. We pick up social-media cues about what our tribe is thinking, and we toe the line. If our tribe hates Joe Rogan, we hate him too. If our tribe believes that immigrants are destroying our country, we believe it too. We forfeit our voice. We forfeit our choice. That warm, fuzzy, satisfying feeling of belonging trumps everything else—including thinking for ourselves.”
Source: Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary
“Be careful if you find yourself in a place where only acceptable truths are allowed. Taboos are a sign of insecurity. Only fragile castles need to be protected by the highest of walls. The best answers are discovered not by eliminating competing answers, but by engaging with them. And engagement happens in groups built, not on taboos and dogma, but on a foundation that celebrates diverse thinking.”
Source: Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary
“The ego corrupts our mindset in five ways: (a) It chooses what we focus on, (b) it makes what we see all about us, (c) it concludes that all negative experiences are due to a deficiency within ourselves, (d) it
magnifies the relevance of our focus, and (e) it causes us to believe that we can think our way out of a situation that is beyond our control or understand something that is unknowable.”
Source: Mindreader: The New Science of Deciphering What People Really Think, What They Really Want, and Who They Really Are
“If we become attuned to these fallacies, then every time we hear them - every time we hear a person attacked, an emotional appeal made, an idea rejected because it isn't perfect, or a phrase like ''we have only two choices'' - our antennae will go up. This doesn't mean that we should necessarily reject what the person is saying but that we should reason more carefully about the issue before deciding what we believe should be done.”
Source: Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things
“You become increasingly comfortable with madness and not just the madness of others, but your own. We're all crazy, I believe, just in different ways.”
Source: The Silent Patient
“I like it that way. I suffer from agoraphobia and xenophobia.
"I have to be drugged to be put on a spaceship because I can't take all that empty space, even if I'm protected from it by a steel shell."
A look of revulsion came over his face. "And I can't stand aliens!”
Source: In Case of Fire