I’ll leave you with a list of questions, all related to the chapters you just read, to ask yourself. Who has the right answers but I ignore because they’re not articulate? Which of my current views would I disagree with if I were born in a different country or generation? What do I desperately want to be true so much that I think it’s true when

The typical attempt to clear up an uncertain future is to gaze further and squint harder—to forecast with more precision, more data, and more intelligence. Far more effective is to do the opposite: Look backward, and be broad. Rather than attempting to figure out little ways the future might change, study the big things the past has never avoided.

The oldest story is that of two sides who don’t agree with each other. The question “Why don’t you agree with me?” can have infinite answers. Sometimes one side is selfish, or stupid, or blind, or uninformed. But usually a better question is, “What have you experienced that I haven’t that makes you believe what you do? And would I think about the

It is too easy to examine history and say, “Look, if you just held on and took a long-term view, things recovered and life went on,” without realizing that mindsets are harder to repair than buildings and cash flows.

There’s a long history of people adapting and rebuilding while the scars of their ordeal remain forever, changing how they think about risk, reward, opportunities, and goals for as long as they live. An important component of human behavior is that people who’ve had different experiences than you will think differently than you do. They’ll have

Drive past the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C., and there is no trace of the plane that crashed into its walls on September 11, 2001. But drive three minutes down the road, to Reagan National Airport, and the scars of 9/11 are everywhere. Shoes off, jackets off, belts off, toothpaste out, hands up, and empty your water bottle while going through

I read newspapers and books every day. I cannot recall one damn thing I read in a newspaper from, say, 2011. But I can tell you in detail about a few great books I read in 2011 and how they changed the way I think. I’ll remember them forever. I’ll keep reading newspapers. But if I read more books I’d probably develop better filters and frameworks

Simplicity is the hallmark of truth—we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated. . . . The sore truth is that complexity sells better.

“In the long run we’re all dead.”