“The problem is that your brain can’t tell the difference between bad and good habits, and so if you have a bad one, it’s always lurking there, waiting for the right cues and rewards.”

The best agencies understood the importance of routines. The worst agencies were headed by people who never thought about it, and then wondered why no one followed their orders.

Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefields in a civil war.

Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage.

Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.

If you believe you can change – if you make it a habit – the change becomes real.

Since the 17th century, insurance agents have been the foremost experts on risk.

Once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp and the only option left is to get to work.

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.

It is facile to imply that smoking, alcoholism, overeating, or other ingrained patters can be upended without real effort. Genuine change requires work and self-understanding of the cravings driving behaviours.

The Golden Rule of Habit Change: You can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only change it.

This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.

Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the orther team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.

The same process that makes AA so effective-the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe-happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.

For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible.

What studies say the number one best way to start an exercise habit is to give yourself a reward that you genuinely enjoy.

If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s easier for the public to accept it.

To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don’t always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.

Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one.

Belief in oneself and knowing who you are, I mean, that’s the foundation for everything great.

The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.

There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.

One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.