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“Sapiens” Quotes

I recently read “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“from about 2 million years ago until around 10,000 years ago, the world was home, at one and the same time, to several human species.” (8)

“The fact is that a jumbo brain is a jumbo drain on the body.” (9)

“In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about 2-3 per cent of total body weight, but it consumes 25 per cent of the body’s energy when the body is at rest. By comparison, the brains of other apes require only 8 per cent of rest-time energy.” (9)

“That spectacular leap from the middle to the top had enormous consequences. Other animals at the top of the pyramid, such as lions and sharks, evolved into that position very gradually, over millions of years. This enabled the ecosystem to develop checks and balances that prevent lions and sharks from wreaking too much havoc. As lions became deadlier, so gazelles evolved to run faster, hyenas to cooperate better, and rhinoceroses to be more bad-tempered. In contrast, humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust.” (11)

“Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence.
Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator. Having so recently been one of the underdogs of the savannah, we are full of fears and anxieties over our position, which makes us doubly cruel and dangerous. Many historical calamities, from deadly wars to ecological catastrophes, have resulted from this over-hasty jump.” (12)

“If the Replacement Theory is correct, all living humans have roughly the same genetic baggage, and racial distinctions among them are negligible. But if the Interbreeding Theory is right, there might well be genetic differences between Africans, Europeans and Asians that go back hundreds of thousands of years.” (15)

“Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens probably also had a hard time talking behind each other’s backs – a much maligned ability which is in fact essential for cooperation in large numbers.” (23)

“This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.” (24)

“To summarize the relationship between biology and history after the Cognitive Revolution:
a. Biology sets the basic parameters for the behaviour and capacities of Homo sapiens. The whole of history takes place within the bounds of this biological arena.
b. However, this arena is extraordinarily large, allowing Sapiens to play an astounding variety of games. Thanks to their ability to invent fiction, Sapiens create more and more complex games, which each generation develops and elaborates even further.” (39)

“In other words, while anthropological observations of modern foragers can help us understand some of the possibilities available to ancient foragers, the ancient horizon of possibilities was much broader, and most of it is hidden from our view.*” (45)

“The heated debates about Homo sapiens ‘natural way of life miss the main point. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.” (45)

“The Sapiens population was thinly spread over vast territories. Before the Agricultural Revolution, the human population of the entire planet was smaller than that of today’s Cairo.” (47)

“Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions.” (74)

“Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure.
Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites.” (79)

“Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” (81)

“What then did wheat offer agriculturists, including that malnourished Chinese girl? It offered nothing for people as individuals.
Ver it did bestow something on Homo sapiens as a species. Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and thereby enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially.” (83)

“The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes. Just as the economic success of a company is measured only by the number of dollars in its bank account, nor by the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA.” (83)

“This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.” (83)

“Then why didn’t humans abandon farming when the plan back-fired? Partly because it took generations for the small changes to accumulate and transform society and, by then, nobody remembered that they had ever lived differently. And partly because population growth burned humanity’s boats.” (87)

“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it.” (87)

“Since farming created the conditions for swift demographic growth, farmers could usually overcome foragers by sheer weight of numbers.” (88)

“Nevertheless, in the subsistence economy of hunting and gathering, there was an obvious limit to such long-term planning. Paradoxically, it saved foragers a lot of anxieties. There was no sense in worrying about things that they could not influence.” (100)

“Everywhere, rulers and elites sprang up, living off the peasants’ surplus food and leaving them with only a bare subsistence.” (101)

“These forfeited food surpluses fuelled politics, wars, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples. Until the late modern era, more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows. The extra they produced fed the tiny minority of elites – kings, government officials, soldiers, priests, artists and thinkers – who fill the history books. History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.” (101)

“Voltaire said about God that there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’.” (111)

“A natural order is a stable order… In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them.” (111)

“This is why cynics don’t build empires and why an imagined order can be maintained only if large segments of the population – and in particular large segments of the elite and the security forces – truly believe in it. Christianity would not have lasted 2,000 years if the majority of bishops and priests failed to believe in Christ. American democracy would not have lasted almost 250 years if the majority of presidents and congressmen failed to believe in human rights. The modern economic system would not have lasted a single day if the majority of investors and bankers failed to believe in capitalism.” (112)

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. You always insist that the order sustaining society is an objective reality created by the great gods or by the laws of nature.” (112)

“Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other.
They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view.” (116)

“Similarly, the dollar, human rights and the United States of America exist in the shared imagination of billions, and no single Individual can threaten their existence. If I alone were to stop believIng in the dollar, in human rights, or in the United States, it wouldn’t much matter. These imagined orders are inter-subjective, so in order to change them we must simultaneously change the consciousness of billions of people, which is not easy, A change of such magnitude can be accomplished only with the help of a complex organisation, such as a political party, an ideological movement, or a religious cult.
However, in order to establish such complex organisations, it’s necessary to convince many strangers to cooperate with one another. And this will happen only if these strangers believe in some shared myths. It follows that in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.” (118)

“There is no way out of the imagined order. When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.” (118)

“The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy.” (130)

“it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.” (134)

“Most people claim that their social hierarchy is natural and just, while those of other societies are based on false and ridiculous criteria.” (136)

“Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted.” (136)

“In most cases the hierarchy originated as the result of a set of accidental historical circumstances and was then perpetuated and refined over many generations as different groups developed vested interests in it.” (138)

“American plantations in places such as Virginia, Haiti and Brazil were plagued by malaria and yellow fever, which had originated in Africa. Africans had acquired over the generations a partial genetic immunity to these diseases, whereas Europeans were totally defenceless and died in droves. It was consequently wiser for a plantation owner to invest his money in an African slave than in a European slave or indentured labourer. Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans, they ended up as the slaves of European masters!” (140)

“They thereby created artificial instincts that enabled millions of strangers to cooperate effectively. This network of artificial instincts is called culture.” (163)

“Every culture has its typical beliefs, norms and values, but these are in constant flux. The culture may transform itself in response to changes in its environment or through interaction with neighbouring cultures. But cultures also undergo transitions due to their own internal dynamics.” (163)

“Another example is the modern political order. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both social equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction.” (164)

“Just as medieval culture did not manage to square chivalry with Christianity, so the modern world fails to square liberty with equality. But this is no defect. Such contradictions are an inseparable part of every human culture. In fact, they are the engines of cultural development, responsible for the creativity and dynamism of our species. Discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.” (165)

“Can you name a single great work of art which is not about conflict?” (165)

“a human being who belongs to any particular culture must hold contradictory beliefs and be driven by incompatible values.” (165)

“Over the millennia, small, simple cultures gradually coalesce into bigger and more complex civilisations, so that the world contains fewer and fewer mega-cultures, each of which is bigger and more complex.” (166)

“At the micro level, it seems that for every group of cultures that coalesces into a mega-culture, there’s a mega-culture that breaks up into pieces.” (166)

“Merchants, conquerors and prophets were the first people who managed to transcend the binary evolutionary division, us vs them’, and to foresee the potential unity of humankind. For the merchants, the entire world was a single market and all humans were potential customers. They tried to establish an economic order that would apply to all, everywhere. For the conquerors, the entire world was a single empire and all humans were potential subjects, and for the prophets, the entire world held a single truth and all humans were potential believers. “ (172)

“ ‘Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs’ turned out in practice into everyone would work as little as they can get away with, and receive as much as they could grab’.” (176)

“The sum total of money in the world is about $6o trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90 per cent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers.” (178)

“money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.” (180)

“Christians and Muslims who could not agree on religious beliefs could nevertheless agree on a monetary belief, because whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.” (185)

“An empire that cannot sustain a blow and remain standing is not really an empire.” (189)

“The truth is that empire has been the world’s most common form of political organisation for the last 2,500 years. Most humans during these two and a half millennia have lived in empires. Empire is also a very stable form of government. Most empires have found it alarmingly easy to put down rebellions. In general, they have been toppled only by external invasion or by a split within the ruling elite.” (192)

“Since all social orders and hierarchies are imagined, they are all fragile, and the larger the society, the more fragile it is. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures. Religions assert that our laws are not the result of human caprice, but are ordained by an absolute and indisputable authority. This helps place at least some fundamental laws beyond challenge, thereby ensuring social stability.” (210)

“The fundamental insight of polytheism, which distinguishes it from monotheism, is that the supreme power governing the world is devoid of interests and biases, and therefore it is unconcerned wich the mundane desires, cares and worries of humans. It’s pointless to ask this power for victory in war, for health or for rain, because from its all-encompassing vantage point, it makes no difference whether a particular kingdom wins or loses, whether a particular city prospers or withers, whether a particular person recuperates or dies.” (214)

“Precisely because their powers are partial rather than all-encompassing, gods such as Ganesha, Lakshmi and Saraswati have interests and biases. Humans can therefore make deals wich these partial powers and rely on their help in order to win wars and recuperate from illness.” (214)

“The insight of polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance. Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods. Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes ‘heretics’ and “infidels”.” (215)

“In the 300 years from the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrators and governors incited some anti-Christian violence of their own. Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.’ In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.”(215-216)

“The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Scholars of religion have a name for this simultaneous avowal of different and even contradictory ideas and the combination of rituals and practices taken from different sources. It’s called syncretism. Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion.” (223)

“Without recourse to eternal souls and a Creator God, it becomes embarrassingly difficult for liberals to explain what is so special about individual Sapiens.” (231)

“The idea that all humans are equal is a revamped version of the monotheist conviction that all souls are equal before God.” (232)

“This is one of the distinguishing marks of history as an academic discipline – the better you know a particular historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. Those who have only a superficial knowledge of a certain period tend to focus only on the possibility that was eventually realised. They offer a just-so story to explain with hindsight why that outcome was inevitable.” (238)

“To acknowledge that history is not deterministic is to acknowledge that it is just a coincidence that most people today believe in nationalism, capitalism and human rights.” (240)

“Cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them. This approach is sometimes called memetics.” (242)

“most late-modern religions and ideologies have already taken death and the afterlife out of the equation.” (271)

“Until the eighteenth century, religions considered death and its aftermath central to the meaning of life.” (271)

“Beginning in the eighteenth century, religions and ideologies such as liberalism, socialism and feminism lost all interest in the afterlife. What, exactly, happens to a Communist after he or she dies? What happens to a capitalist? What happens to a feminist?” (271)

“The only modern ideology that still awards death a central role is nationalism. In its more poetic and desperate moments, nationalism promises that whoever dies for the nation will forever live in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it.” (271)

“Most scientific studies are funded because somebody believes they can help attain some political, economic or religious goal.” (272)

“Scientists themselves are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control the flow of money; many scientists do, in fact, act out of pure intellectual curiosity. However, only rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda.” (273)

“Science can explain what exists in the world, how things work, and what might be in the future. By definition, it has no pretensions to knowing what should be in the future. Only religions and ideologies seek to answer such questions.” (273)

“Science is unable to set its own priorities. It is also incapable of determining what to do with its discoveries.” (274)

“In short, scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology.” (274)

“As time went by, the conquest of knowledge and the conquest of territory became ever more tightly intertwined. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, almost every important military expedition that left Europe for distant lands had on board scientists who set out not to fight but to make scientific discoveries.” (284)

“For thousands of years, not only the greatest thinkers and scholars but also the infallible Scriptures had known only Europe, Africa and Asia. Could they all have been wrong? Could the Bible have missed half the world?” (287)

“In his refusal to admit ignorance, Columbus was still a medieval man. He was convinced he knew the whole world, and even his momentous discovery failed to convince him otherwise.
The first modern man was Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailor who took part in several expeditions to America in the years 1499-1504. Between 1502 and 1504, two texts describing these expeditions were published in Europe. They were attributed to Vespucci.
These texts argued that the new lands discovered by Columbus were not islands off the East Asian coast, but rather an entire continent unknown to the Scriptures, classical geographers and contemporary Europeans. In 1507, convinced by these arguments, a respected mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller published an updated world map, the first to show the place where Europe’s westward-sailing fleets had landed as a separate continent. Having drawn it, Waldseemüller had to give it a name. Erroneously believing that Amerigo Vespucci had been the person who discovered it, Waldseemüller named the continent in his honour – America. The Waldseemüller map became very popular and was copied by many other cartographers, spreading the name he had given the new land.
There is poetic justice in the fact that a quarter of the world, and two of its seven continents, are named after a little-known Italian whose sole claim to fame is that he had the courage to say, ‘We don’t know?’ (288)

“It took them 400 years to get from Rome to London. In 350 BC, no Roman would have conceived of sailing directly to Britain and conquering it.” (290)

“The Zheng He expeditions prove that Europe did not enjoy an outstanding technological edge. What made Europeans exceptional was their unparalleled and insatiable ambition to explore and conquer.” (291)

“The oddity is that early modern Europeans caught a fever that drove them to sail to distant and completely unknown lands full of alien cultures, take one step on to their beaches, and immediately declare, ‘I claim all these territories for my king!’” (291)

“The European empires did so many different things on such a large scale, that you can find plenty of examples to support whatever you want to say about them.” (302)

“Banks are allowed to loan $1o for every dollar they actually possess, which means that 90 per cent of all the money in our bank accounts is not covered by actual coins and notes.” (306)

“What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is the sole backing for most of the money in the world.” (307)

“Over the last 5o0 years the idea of progress convinced people to put more and more trust in the future. This trust created credit; credit brought real economic growth; and growth strengthened the trust in the future and opened the way for even more credit.” (310)

“That’s why capitalism is called ‘capitalism’. Capitalism distinguishes ‘capital’ from mere wealth’. Capital consists of money, goods and resources that are invested in production. Wealth, on the other hand, is buried in the ground or wasted on unproductive activities.” (312)

“Financing wars through taxes and plunder (without making fine distinctions between the two, they owed little to credit systems, and they cared even less about the interests of bankers and investors.
In Europe, on the other hand, kings and generals gradually adopted the mercantile way of thinking, until merchants and bankers became the ruling elite. The European conquest of the world was increasingly financed through credit rather than taxes, and was increasingly directed by capitalists whose main ambition was to receive maximum returns on their investments. The empires built by bankers and merchants in frock coats and top hats defeated the empires built by kings and noblemen in gold clothes and shining armour. The mercantile empires were simply much shrewder in financing their conquests. Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest.” (316)

“This was the magic circle of imperial capitalism: credit financed new discoveries; discoveries led to colonies; colonies provided profits; profits built trust; and trust translated into more credit.” (317)

“Capital trickles away from dictatorial states that fail to defend private individuals and their property. Instead, it flows into states upholding the rule of law and private property.” (318)

“In such ways did the king of Spain squander the trust of investors at the same time that Dutch merchants gained their confidence. And it was the Dutch merchants – not the Dutch state – who built the Dutch Empire.” (320)

“The king of Spain kept on trying to finance and maintain his conquests by raising unpopular taxes from a disgruntled populace. The Dutch merchants financed conquest by getting loans, and increasingly also by selling shares in their companies that entitled their holders to receive a portion of the company’s profits.” (320)

“Western governments were becoming a capitalist trade union.” (325)

“This is why today a country’s credit rating is far more important to its economic well-being than are its natural resources.” (328)

“There simply is no such thing as a market free of all political bias. The most important economic resource is trust in the future, and this resource is constantly threatened by thieves and charlatans. Markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. It is the job of political systems to ensure trust by legislating sanctions against cheats and to establish and support police forces, courts and jails which will enforce the law. When kings fail to do their jobs and regulate the markets properly, it leads to loss of trust, dwindling credit and economic depression.” (329)

“This is the fly in the ointment of free-market capitalism, It cannot ensure that profits are gained in a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner. On the contrary, the craving to increase profits and production blinds people to anything that might stand in the way, When growth becomes a supreme good, unrestricted by any other ethical considerations, it can easily lead to catastrophe.” (331)

“Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred, Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.” (331)

“The Atlantic slave trade did not stem from racist hatred towards Africans. The individuals who bought the shares, the brokers who sold them, and the managers of the slave trade companies rarely thought about the Africans, Nor did the owners of the sugar plantations. Many owners lived far from their plantations, and the only information they demanded were neat ledgers of profits and losses.” (331)

“Today in the United States, only 2 per cent of the population makes a living from agriculture, yet this 2 per cent produces enough not only to feed the entire US population, but also to export surpluses to the rest of the world.” (346)

“Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products – contributing to economic growth twice over.” (348)

“The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’” (349)

“The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money, and that the masses give free rein to their cravings and passions – and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do.” (349)

“Yet all of these upheavals are dwarfed by the most momentous social revolution that ever befell humankind: the collapse of the family and the local community and their replacement by the state and the market.” (355)

“The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension.” (359)

“Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future. This isn’t a lie. It’s imagination. Like money, limited liability companies and human rights, nations and consumer tribes are inter-subjective realities. They exist only in our collective imagin-ation, yet their power is immense.” (363)

“In the battle for human loyalty, national communities have to compete with tribes of customers. People who do not know one another intimately but share the same consumption habits and interests often feel part of the same consumer tribe – and define themselves as such. Madonna fans, for example, constitute a consumer tribe.” (364)

“Secondly, while the price of war soared, its profits declined. For most of history, polities could enrich themselves by looting or annexing enemy territories. Most wealth consisted of material things like fields, cattle, slaves and gold, so it was easy to loot it or occupy it. Today, wealth consists mainly of human capital and organizational know-how. Consequently it is difficult to carry it off or conquer it by military force.” (372)

“It is not coincidental that the few full-scale international wars that still take place in the world, such as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, occur in places were wealth is old-fashioned material wealth. The Kuwaiti sheikhs could flee abroad, but the oil fields stayed put and were occupied.” (373)

“There is a positive feedback loop between all these four factors.
The threat of nuclear holocaust fosters pacifism; when pacifism spreads, war recedes and trade flourishes; and trade increases both the profits of peace and the costs of war.” (374)

“Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health. People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of. Marriage is particularly important. Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery. This holds true irrespective of economic or even physical conditions.” (382)

“This raises the possibility that the immense improvement in material conditions over the last two centuries was offset by the collapse of the family and the community. If so, the average person might well be no happier today than in 1800. Even the freedom we value so highly may be working against us. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path in Jife, we find it ever harder to make commitments. We thus live in an increasingly lonely world of unravelling communities and families.” (382)

“We moderns have an arsenal of tranquillisers and painkillers at our disposal, but our expectations of ease and pleasure, and our intolerance of inconvenience and dis-comfort, have increased to such an extent that we may well suffer from pain more than our ancestors ever did.” (383)

“You might say that we didn’t need a bunch of psychologists and their questionnaires to discover this. Prophets, poets and philosophers realised thousands of years ago that being satisfied with what you already have is far more important than getting more of what you want. Still, it’s nice when modern research – bolstered by lots of numbers and charts – reaches the same conclusions the ancients did.” (383)

“Some scholars compare human biochemistry to an air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature constant, come heatwave or snowstorm. Events might momentarily change the temperature, but the air-conditioning system always returns the temperature to the same set point.
Some air-conditioning systems are set at 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Others are set at twenty degrees. Human happiness conditioning systems also differ from person to person. On a scale from one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilising with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock—exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes. Other people are cursed with a gloomy biochemistry that swings between three and seven and stabilises at five. Such an unhappy person remains depressed even if she enjoys the support of a tight-knit community, wins millions in the lottery and is as healthy as an Olympic athlete. Indeed, even if our gloomy friend wins $50,000,000 in the morning, discovers the cure for both AIDS and cancer by noon, makes peace between Israelis and Palestinians that afternoon, and then in the evening reunites with her long-lost child who disappeared years ago – she would still be incapable of experiencing anything beyond level seven happiness. Her brain is simply not built for exhilaration, come what may.
Think for a moment of your family and friends. You know some people who remain relatively joyful, no matter what befalls them.
And then there are those who are always disgruntled, no matter what gifts the world lays at their feet.” (386-387)

“Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry.
They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.” (387)

“People think that this political revolution or that social reform will make them happy, but their biochemistry tricks them time and again.” (389)

“happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments.
Rather, happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.” (391)

“Our values make all the difference to whether we see ourselves as ‘miserable slaves to a baby dictator’ or as lovingly nurturing a new life’.” (391)

“A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.” (391)

“So perhaps happiness is synchronising one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.” (392)

“From a Christian viewpoint, the vast majority of people are in more or less the same situation as heroin addicts. Imagine that a psychologist embarks on a study of happiness among drug users. He polls them and finds that they declare, every single one of them, that they are only happy when they shoot up. Would the psychologist publish a paper declaring that heroin is the key to happiness?” (393)

“Buddha agreed with modern biology and New Age movements that happiness is independent of external conditions. Yet his more important and far more profound insight was that true happiness is also independent of our inner feelings. Indeed, the more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer. Buddha’s recommendation was to stop not only the pursuit of external achievements, but also the pursuit of inner feelings.” (396)

“The biologists are right about the past, but the proponents of intelligent design might, ironically, be right about the future.” (399)

“Our late modern world prides itself on recognising, for the first time in history, the basic equality of all humans, yet it might be poised to create the most unequal of all societies. Throughout his-tory, the upper classes always claimed to be smarter, stronger and generally better than the underclass. They were usually deluding themselves. A baby born to a poor peasant family was likely to be as intelligent as the crown prince. With the help of new medical capabilities, the pretensions of the upper classes might soon become an objective reality.” (410)

“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?” (416)

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“The System” Quotes

I recently read “The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It” by Robert B. Reich. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“Forget the old idea that corporations succeed by becoming better, cheaper, or faster than their competitors. They now succeed mainly by increasing their monopoly power.” (8)

“adjusted for inflation, CEO pay increased 940 percent, but the typical worker’s pay increased 12 percent. In the 1960s, the typical CEO of a large American company earned about twenty times as much as the typical worker; by 2019, the CEO earned three hundred times as much.” (15)

“the share of total wealth held by the richest o.1 percent-about 160,000 American households—went from less than 10 percent to 20 percent over the last four decades. They now own almost as much wealth as the bottom 9o percent of households combined. The entire bottom half of America now owns just 1.3 percent. The only other country with similarly high levels of wealth concentration is Russia.” (15)

“People with the most to lose from genuine social change have put themselves in charge of social change.” (29)

“All of the nation’s unions together spend about $48 million annually on lobbying in Washington. Corporate America spends $3 billion.” (56)

“In the 1970s, only about 3 percent of retiring members of Congress went on to become Washington lobbyists. In recent years, fully half of all retiring senators and 42 percent of retiring representatives have turned to lobbying, regardless of party affiliation.” (59)

“Liberty produces wealth, and wealth destroys liberty.” -Henry Demarest Lloyd (113)

“Reformer Mary Lease charged, “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street”” (114)

“President Woodrow Wilson explained the danger of excessive economic and political power in his 1913 book, The New Freedom: “I do not expect to see monopoly restrain itself. If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”” (115)

“The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power,” counsels Warren Buffett, America’s second wealthiest man, whose net worth as of July 2019 was $84.4 billion. Buffett’s most important investment criterion isn’t productivity, product quality, or innovation.
He says it’s “the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor.”” (116)

“Payrolls are typically 70 percent of a corporation’s costs.” (118)

“As I’ve said, the economy doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game in which winners do better only to the extent losers do worse. But power is necessarily a zero-sum game. Certain people possess it only to the extent other people don’t. Some people gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.” (139)

“Through it all, Americans have clung to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re worth in the market, without examining changes in the legal and political institutions that define the market. This tautology is easily confused with a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim is meaningful only if the system’s legal and political institutions are morally just.” (140)

“Since 1982, the combined wealth of these three families (Koch, Walmart, Mars candy) has grown nearly 6,000 percent, adjusted for inflation. Over the same period, the typical household’s wealth dropped 3 percent. (141)

“The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.” (141)

“Harold Arena says, “I think they overregulate the bottom because it’s harder to regulate the top.”” (159)

“Decades ago, a general election was like a competition between two hot-dog vendors on a long boardwalk extending from the right to the left. Each had to move to the middle to maximize sales. If one strayed too far left or too far right, the other would move beside him and take all sales from the rest of the boardwalk.” (165)

“This is why oligarchies depend on ways other than brute force to hold power. The three most common are: (1) systems of belief-religions, dogmas, and ideologies- intended to convince most people of the righteousness of the oligarchy’s claim to power; (2) bribes to the most influential people to gain their support and thereby legitimize the oligarchy; and (3) manufactured threats-supposed foreign enemies or “enemies within,” as well as immigrants and minority populations-to divert attention from the oligarchy so the diverse elements within the majority won’t join together against it.
Today’s American oligarchy deploys all three.” (166-167)

“People deserve whatever they earn in the market. Income and wealth are measures of worth. If you amass a billion dollars, then you must deserve it because that’s what the market awarded you. If you barely scrape by, then you have only yourself to blame.” (168)

“One of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith (174)

“Many of them are socially liberal. They favor diversity and indusion, equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, transgender bathrooms, and a woman’s right to choose. They want more women, blacks, and Latinos on corporate boards, in executive suites, and as members of Congress. Most resolutely disapprove of racism, white privilege, misogyny, and zenophobia in America. They worry about the destruction of the environment. But they avoid questions of class and power like the plague. Personal issues of identity are on the table, but the system is not.” (176)

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“The Fault In Our Stars” Quotes

I recently read “The Fault In Our Stars” by John Green. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” (63)

“We’re all just side effects, right?” “Barnacles on the container ship of consciousness.” (72)

“I mustn’t let it kill me before it kills me.” (121)

“I had a moral opposition to eating before dawn on the grounds that I was not a nineteenth-century Russian peasant fortifying myself for a day in the fields.” (137)

“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of isn, bu tin truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.” (157)

“I find the reality of readers wholly unappetizing.” (183)

“Peter took a sip, then sat up straight in his chair. “A drink this good deserves one’s best posture.” (184)

“Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.” (223)

“I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed.” (223)

“There was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.” (262)

“I kept thinking there were two kinds of adults: There were Peter Van Houtens-miserable creatures who scoured the earth in search of something to hurt. And then there were people like my parents, who walked around zombically, doing whatever they had to do to keep walking around.” (277)

“what we want is to be noticed by the universe, to have the universe give a shit what happens to us-not the collective idea of sentient life but each of us, as individuals.” (281)

“I was insufferable long before we lost her. Grief does not change you. It reveals you.” (286)

“The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion.” (311)

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“T: The Story of Testosterone” Quotes

I recently read “T: The Story of Testosterone, the hormone that dominates and divides us” by Carole Hooven. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“What do all males (or females) have in common, if not sex chromosomes? Basically it’s the relative size of the sex cells or gametes. Males produce small, mobile gametes (sperm), and females produce larger, immobile gametes (eggs). Don’t take that too literally -my son doesn’t yet make sperm, but he’s still male. And although my ovaries are no longer regularly producing eggs, I’m no less female than when they were cranking them out on a monthly schedule. Rather, it’s the design plan for the gametes that counts.” (61)

“Testosterone builds muscle, men have more of it, and it gives them a strong advantage over women in sports.” (125)

“With the T implants, the previously docile stages began to pick fights with nearby males, even when their antlers had not yet grown back and were still covered with soft velvet. These results show that testosterone is necessary but not sufficient for the expression of sexual behavior— the proper environmental stimulus, whether fertile females or something associated with their fertility, must also be present.” (143)

“T levels fluctuate depending on whether a male needs to be ready to breed, care for his family, or fight off rivals.” (153)

“The ups and downs of T are adaptive: high T is not always better than low T, and depending on the circumstances, it can be fatal.” (153)

“T’s primary job is to coordinate male sexual anatomy, physiology, and behavior in the service of reproduction. For may male animals that must compete for mates, one of the behaviors that most directly supports reproduction is aggression.” (157)

“Many studies have found similar results, in which T rises prior to a competition in both the eventual winners and losers, but T remains elevated for longer in the winners than the losers.” (172)

“introduced to each other and given time to form status hierarchies.

the T’d-up monkey is not indiscriminately harassing anyone who happens to irritate him.

Instead, he beats up only on those beneath him on the totem pole and remains polite toward the higher-ups.” (178)

“T is not a potion that turns the meek into warriors or that causes rampant bellicosity. Its effects depend heavily on individual and environmental factors, and in humans especially, winning and achieving high status can often be accomplished without any physical aggression at all. T tends to do what the situation requires. As Sapolsky joked during a lecture, if you shot up a bunch of Buddhist monks with testosterone, it would lead not to violence but to random acts of kindness.” (178)

“As I have stressed throughout this book, behaviors that show sex differences are often heavily influenced by culture-and aggression is a clear example. Laws and cultural and social norms can push physical aggression up or down. We can hope that social changes will reduce violence-perpetrated largely by men-yet further. But one can’t solve a problem if one misunderstands its causes.“ (183)

“men are more motivated to have sex and have a stronger preference for a variety of partners. Gay men have more sex simply because they can: it’s not a “gay” thing, it’s a “man” thing.” (209)

“T’s brick like effects are the reason that physically transiting in the male-to-female (MtF) direction is so much harder than the reverse (FtM).” (216)

(From Stella, a detransitioned woman) “My sex drive vanished for months when I went off of T but it’s come back now, albeit in a very different way. Getting turned on is different. It was very obvious when I was turned on and the need to release was more urgent when I was on T. The release was also a lot more physical and gratifying after a single orgasm. I would become extremely sensitive when I had an orgasm on T. It almost feels incomplete now if I only have one orgasm. It’s not a release, it feels more like the building of something bigger. I may be biased, but after experiencing both, I can certainly say I prefer the orgasms off T.” (233)

(From Stella, a detransitioned woman) “The only emotion that seems duller now that I’m off T is anger, which used to be my most vivid emotion. I experience anger differently, more tied in with sadness than rage. I think most of my intense emotions before T were just due to still going through puberty, and it’s balancing out for me now as an adult.” (235)

“Changing our environment can actually alter what goes on inside our bodies – the wya your genes are expressed, th levels and actions of our hormones. If I exercise every day I will change my dopamine levels; and if I eat less sugar my insulin won’t spike up; if I’m a man and I get into the boxing ring for a fight, my T levels may rise, and so on.” (252)

“One thing I can do with my knowledge of testosterone is help him [my son, about to hit puberty] to understand that his feelings throughout this transition will probably be of a different character from those of his female counterparts, and it’s OK. Characteristically masculine feelings are not toxic; he is not toxic for having them. What matters are actions, and he has control over those.” (260)

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“Pitch Anything” Quotes

I recently read “Pitch Anything: An innovative method for presenting, persuading and winning the deal” by Oren Klaff. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“I was faced with the presenter’s problem: You can have incredible knowledge about your subject. You can make your most important points clearly, even with passion, and you can be very well organized. You can do all those things as well as they can be done-and still not be convincing. That’s because a great pitch is not about procedure. It’s about getting and keeping attention.And that means you have to own the room with frame control, drive emotions with intrigue pings, and get to a hookpoint fairly quickly.” (4)

“I got him to the hookpoint, the place in the presentation where your listeners become emotionally engaged. Instead of you giving them information, they are asking you for more on their own. At the hookpoint, they go beyond interested to being involved and then committed.” (5)

“And though most of us spend less than 1 percent of our time doing it, pitching may be the most important thing we do.” (7)

“Our thought process exactly matches our evolution: First, survival. Then, social relationships. Finally, problem solving.” (9)

“But this is exactly where my thinking—and probably yours— went off track. I assumed that if my idea-making abilities were located in the neocortex (as they are), then that’s where the people listening to my pitch were processing what I had to say.
It’s not.
Messages that are composed and sent by your young neocortex are received and processed by the other person’s old crocodile brain.” (9-10)

“But no pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult.” (10)

“Ultimately, if they are successful, your pitches do work their way up to their neocortex eventually. And certainly by the time the other person is ready to say “Yes, we have a deal,” he is dealing with the information at the highest logic center of his brain. But that is not where the other person initially hears what you have to say.” (10)

“First, given the limited focus and capacity of the croc brain, up to 90 percent of your message is discarded before it’s passed on up to the midbrain and then on to the neocortex.
Second, unless your message is presented in such a way that the crocodile brain views it to be new and exciting-it is going to be ignored.
Third, if your pitch is complicated-if it contains abstract language and lacks visual cues-then it is perceived as a threat.” (12)

“What is vitally important is making sure your message fulfills two objectives: First, you don’t want your message to trigger fear alarms. And second, you want to make sure it gets recognized as something positive, unexpected, and out of the ordinary—a pleasant novelty.” (14)

“coming our or my neocortex and present them in a way that the crocodile brain of the person I was pitching could easily accept and pay attention to.
To make this process easier to remember, I use the acronym
STRONG:
Set the frame
Tell the story
Reveal the intrigue
Offer the prize
Nail the hookpoint
Get the deal” (17)

“When frames come together, the first thing they do is collide.
And this isn’t a friendly competition—it’s a death match. Frames don’t merge. They don’t blend. And they don’t intermingle. They collide, and the stronger frame absorbs the weaker.
Only one frame will dominate after the exchange, and the other frames will be subordinate to the winner. This is what happens below the surface of every business meeting you attend, every sales call you make, and every person-to-person business communication you have.” (22)

“If you have to explain your authority, power, position, leverage, and advantage, you do not hold the stronger frame.” (27)

“ Frames mainly involve basic desires. These are the domain of the croc brain. It would be fair to say that strong frames activate basic desires.” (28)

“I think of these things before I take a meeting: What are the basic primal attitudes and emotions that will be at play? Then I make simple decisions about the kind of frame I want to go in with.” (28)

“For many years, I used just four frames that would cover every business situation. For example, if I know the person I’m meeting is a hard-charging, type A personality, I will go in with a power-busting frame. If that person is an analytical, dollars-and-cents type, I will choose an intrigue frame. If I’m outnumbered and outgunned and the deck is stacked against me, time frames and prize frames are essential.” (28)

“Going into most business situations, there are three major types of opposing frames that you will encounter:

  1. Power frame
  2. Time frame
  3. Analyst frame
    You have three major response frame types that you can use to meet these oncoming frames, win the initial collision, and control the agenda:
  4. Power-busting frame
  5. Time constraining frame
  6. Intrigue frame
  7. Prize frame” (29)

“Observing power rituals in business situations-such as acting deferential, engaging in meaningless small talk, or letting yourself be told what to do-reinforces the alpha status of your target and confirms your subordinate position. Do not do this!” (30)

“If a guy is going to dominate you, let him dominate you on the price of something like a hand drawing in this case, something that doesn’t matter. If you find yourself in a similar situation (the day will come when this happens to you, too), then pick something abstract and start an intense price negotiation over it-and it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. The power of the person’s frame is rendered trivial, and the focus is back to you and what you want to do with the meeting.” (33)

“To instigate a power frame collision, use a mildly shocking but not unfriendly act to cause it. Use defiance and light humor. This captures attention and elevates your status by creating something called “local star power.”” (33)

“You place a folder on the conference table that is labeled “Conk dential-John Smith.” When the target reaches for the file, you wab it and say, “Uh-uh, not yet, You have to wait for this,”If you deal in creative work and you brought visuals, let the target sneak a peck and then, when you see him curiously looking, turn it over, take it away, and deliver a soft reprimand that says, not until I say you’re ready.” (34)

“Another way to control the frame is to respond to a comment with a small but forceful act of defiance.
TARGET: “Thanks for coming over. I only have 15 minutes this afternoon.”
YOU: “That’s okay, I only have 12.” You smile. But you are serious, too.” (34)

“He might be feeling a little buzz from what you’ve just done but is not offended because you were not rude or mean. When you are defiant and funny at the same time, he is pleasantly challenged by you and instinctively knows that he is in the presence of a pro. This is the moment when he realizes that this is a game, that the game is now on, and that you are both about to have a lot of fun playing it.” (35)

“This is a subtle framing technique known as prizing. What you do is reframe everything your audience does and says as if they are trying to win you over.” (39)

“To solidify the prize frame, you make the buyer qualify himself to you. “Can you tell me more about yourself? I’m picky about who I work with.” At a primal, croc brain level, you have just issued a challenge: Why do I want to do business with you?” (40)

“When you are reacting to the other person, that person owns the frame. When the other person is reacting to what you do and say, you own the frame.” (49)

“When attention is lacking, set your own time constraint, and bounce out of there:
“Hey, looks like time’s up. I’ve got to wrap this up and get to my next meeting.” If they are interested in you, they will agree to a follow-up.” (50)

“When you encounter a time frame like this, quickly break it with a stronger prize frame of your own. Qualify your target on the spot.
You: “No. I don’t work like that. There’s no sense in rescheduling unless we like each other and trust each other. I need to know, are you good to work with, can you keep appointments, and stick to a schedule?”” (50)

“Nothing will freeze your pitch faster than allowing your audience to grind numbers or study details during the pitch.” (52)

“It is important to realize that human beings are unable to have hot cognitions and cold cognitions simultaneously.” (52)

“you must force your audience to be analytical on its own time. You do this by separating the technical and detailed material from your presentation.” (52)

“You answer the question directly and with the highest-level information possible. Then you redirect their attention back to your pitch.” (53)

“In financial deals, I respond with something like this:
“The revenue is $80 million, expenses are $62 million, the net is $18 million. These and other facts you can verify later, but right now, what we need to focus on is this: Are we a good fit?
Should we be doing business together? This is what I came here to work on.”” (53)

“Keep the target focused on the business relationship at all times.
Analysis comes later. This is the best and most reliable way to deal with a target who suddenly becomes bored and tries to entertain himself with the details of your deal.” (53)

“No one takes a meeting to hear about something they already know and understand.” (54)

“At the start of the meeting, you have the audience’s attention.
It’s a rare moment, but not for the reason you may think. Audience members are, with full concentration and at the most basic and primal level, trying to figure out the answer to this question:
“How similar is your idea to something I already know about or to a problem I have already solved?”
If audience members discover that the answer is close to what they had earlier guessed, they will mentally check out on you.” (54)

“Your intrigue story needs the following elements:

  1. It must be brief, and the subject must be relevant to your pitch.
  2. You need to be at the center of the story.
  3. There should be risk, danger, and uncertainty.
  4. There should be time pressure—a clock is ticking somewhere, and there are ominous consequences if action is not taken quickly.
  5. There should be tension-you are trying to do something but are being blocked by some force.
  6. There should be serious consequences-failure will not be pretty.” (56)

“Whenever we chase someone or value someone else more than ourselves, we assume the subordinate position and put ourselves at a disadvantage.” (62)

“Prizing is the sum of the actions you take to get to your target to understand that he is a commodity and you are the prize.” (63)

“The prize frame works best when you change your attitude about money—fully realizing that money is almost useless to any buyer/investor until it purchases what you have.” (66)

“We must give up the concept of ABC, or “Always Be Closing,” a phrase popularized by the sales gurus of the 1980s. Instead, you must embrace the idea that money is a commodity, that it is available in a thousand places, and that it’s all the same no matter where it comes from. Knowing this, it is more likely you will embrace ABL- “Always Be Leaving.”” (67)

“Imagine that-Investors reframed as a commodity, a vending machine for money. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense because there are many places to source money, but there is only one you. Your deal is unique among all others. If you think of yourself and your deal in this way and build frames around this idea, you will be pleased at how it will change the social dynamics in your meetings with investors.” (67)

“If you want to get started with this, in a simple, low-risk way, here is a phrase I often use to set the prize frame firmly in place: “I’m glad I could find the time to meet with you today. And I do have another meeting right after this. Let’s get started.”” (67)

“You don’t earn status by being polite, by obeying the established power rituals of business, or by engaging in friendly small talk before a meeting starts. What these behaviors might earn you is a reputation for being “nice.” They do nothing for your social position- except reduce it.” (69)

“Unless you are a celebrity, a tycoon, or the guy who just landed your company the largest deal it has ever done, in most cases you enter a new business setting with a low social position. The harder you try to fit into this social scene, the lower your perceived social value becomes.” (69-70)

“When it comes down to finding the alpha, nobody takes the time to draft a balance sheet of who owns the most assets, who commands the most wealth, and who is the most popular. It’s a subconscious and instant recognition of status.” (70)

“You can alter the way people think about you by creating situational status.” (70)

“It doesn’t matter how well you argue, the way your points are crafted, or how elegant your flow and logic. If you do not have high status, you will not command the attention necessary to make your pitch heard. You will not persuade, and you will not easily get a deal done.” (76-77)

“In general, public spaces are the most deadly beta traps and should be avoided.” (81)

“If you need to pitch someone attending a conference, rent a hospitality suite or a hotel conference space or borrow someone’s office conference room—pitch anywhere but on the floor of the convention hall.
A person standing in a trade show booth may as well erect a neon sign above his or her head that reads, “I Am Needy!” Like a caged pet-shop puppy or a late-night infomercial host, you try to draw them into your 8- by 10-foot cube and hope to wow them with your pitch. It’s sad.” (82)

“Once the surgeon stepped into the realm of the golf pro, his status fell, and the golf pro’s rose, and this change in social elevation remains in effect for as long as the surgeon is in the golf pro’s domain.” (85)

“Think about this for a moment: Your social value is fluid and changes with the environment you are in—or the environment you create. If you wish to elevate your social value in any given situation, you can do so by redirecting people into a domain where you are in charge, This is easier to do than you might think.” (85-86)

“The first impression we make on another person is based on that person’s automatic cakulation of our social value, As a survival mech-anism, the other person’s brain is making it a priority to understand where you fit in the social structure. The person makes a hasty judgment using three measurable criteria; your wealth, your power, and your popularity.” (86)

“What this example demonstrates is that a well-chosen, well-timed friendly but disruptive act will dethrone the king in a single stroke. In that brief, shocking moment when no one is quite sure what you’ve just done, that is when your frame takes over and when high status transfers to you.” (90)

“In general, just ignore conversation threads that don’t support your deal, and magnify ones that do.” (90)

“• Momentum is key. Create high status immediately. Do not hesitate. Choose a frame, and force a collision at the most opportune moment—and do it early. The longer you wait, the more you reinforce the status of your target.

  • Avoid social rituals that reinforce the status of others. Idle social banter diminishes your status.
  • Have fun. Be popular. Enjoy your work. There is nothing as attractive as someone who is enjoying what he or she does. It attracts the group to you and allows you to build stronger frames and hold them longer.” (92)

“Global status is fixed. It’s only situational status that you can grab and control.” (93)

“1. Politely ignore power rituals and avoid beta traps.

  1. Be unaffected by your customer’s global status (meaning the customer’s status inside and outside the business environment).
  2. Look for opportunities to perpetrate small denials and defiances that strengthen your frame and elevate your status.
  3. As soon as you take power, quickly move the discussion into an area where you are the domain expert, where your knowledge and information are unassailable by your audience.
  4. Apply a prize frame by positioning yourself as the reward for making the decision to do business with you.
  5. Confirm your alpha status by making your customer, who now temporarily occupies a beta position, make a statement that qualifies your higher status.” (93)

“I may say something like, “Remind me again why in the world I want to do business with you?”
This usually elicits a few guffaws—and a serious response amid the laughter: “Because we’re the largest bank in California, Oren.” To which I say, “Yeah, that’s good, I’ll keep that in mind.” It needs to be playful and interesting, with just a little edge to it.” (94)

“Ask another qualifying question: “Have you ever done a deal this large before?” This is the best way I’ve found to get an audience to qualify my dominant frame.” (94)

“Pause and consider this for a moment: The most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century (DNA) can be pitched in five minutes. Yet nearly every pitch that I’ve seen—and I see hundreds every year-takes at least 45 minutes and usually an hour, a ridiculous amount of time! No company in America should let its executives pitch for an hour.” (95)

“As soon as the pitch or presentation begins, one critical thing must happen: The target must feel at ease. In the vast majority of cases, they don’t because they don’t know how long they’re going to be stuck listening to you, and you’re a stranger.” (96)

“To put them at ease, I have a simple solution: It’s called the time-constraint pattern. This is what you say, exactly, to let the target know he isn’t trapped in the typical hour-long-meeting: “Guys, let’s get started, I’ve only got about 20 minutes to give you the big idea, which will leave us some time to talk it over before I have to get out of here.”” (96)

“What’s important here is not your mastery over the details but your mastery over attention and time.” (96)

“Make the pitch in four sections:

  1. Introduce yourself and the big idea: 5 minutes.
  2. Explain the budget and secret sauce: 10 minutes.
  3. Offer the deal: 2 minutes.
  4. Stack frames for a hot cognition: 3 minutes.” (97)

The key to success here is making it about your track record. Things you built.
Projects that actually worked out. Successes. Spend less than two minutes on it and definitely not more.” (97)

“Research has shown that your impression of someone is generally based on the average of the available information about them, not the sum. So telling people one great thing about yourself will leave them with a better impression of you than telling them one great thing and one pretty good one.” (98)

“You need to introduce a “Why now?” frame. It’s vitally important that the target knows that your idea is new, emerging from current market opportunities and that it’s not some relic left over from bygone days.”” (99)

“The target needs to know that you are pitching a new idea that came to life from a pattern of forces that you recognized, seized, and are now taking advantage of. And the target needs to know that you have more knowledge about these things than anyone else.” (99)

“Three-Market-Forces Pattern: Trendcasting
When you describe your idea, project, or product, first give it context by framing it against these three market forces or trending patterns that you believe are important.

  1. Economic forces. Briefly describe what has changed financially in the market for your big idea. For example, are customers wealthier, is credit more available, is financial optimism higher? Increases or decreases in interest rates, inflation, and the value of the dollar are considered as prime examples of forces that have significant impact on business opportunities.
  2. Social forces. Highlight what emerging changes in people’s behavior patterns exist for your big idea. An obvious example in the market for automobiles, concern over the environment—a social force-is driving demand for electric vehicles.
  3. Technology forces. Technological change can flatten existing business models and even entire industries because demand shifts from one product to another. In electronics, for example, change is rapid and constant, but in furniture manufacturing, change is more gradual.” (99-100)

“Describe the genesis of your idea, how it evolved, and the opportunity you saw as it was emerging. The backstory of the idea is always interesting to the target. Once this story is told, everything you say in your pitch will be legitimized by it.” (100)

“Movement is a critical element in the “Why now?” frame. Your target needs to understand the forces that are pushing your deal and to understand that your success is inevitable and imminent as a consequence of these greater forces.” (102)

“Targets simply do not like old deals. They want to see movement, and they don’t like deals that have been sitting around, ignored by other investors or partners.” (104)

“The idea introduction pattern:
“For [target customers]
Who are dissatstifed with [the current offerings in the market].
My idea/product is a [new idea or product category]
That provides [key problem/solution features.
Unlike [the competing product).
My idea/product is [describe key features].”
Here’s an example of a quick introduction for a big idea called the “Energy Tech 1000.”” (105)

“The rudimentary model of how attention works goes like this: We notice things that have movement through space and time because they are likely to be important. But there’s a catch— a lot of the time things that move are also things we have to run away from. Starting from this premise, in the pitch we want to create attention without threat. This is why I have come to believe in—and rely on—the idea introduction pattern, because, of all the ways to introduce an idea, it does the least to trigger threat avoidance in the croc brain.” (107)

“Let’s review the actions to take in phase 1 of the pitch:

  • First, you put the target at ease by telling him in advance that the pitch is going to be short, just about 20 minutes, and that you’re not going to be hanging around too long afterward. This keeps the target’s croc brain focused on the here and now and feeling safe.
  • Then, you give your background in terms of a track record of successes, not a long list of places and institutions where you simply “punched the clock.” There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the more you talk about your background, the more average it becomes because the target is hardwired to average information about you, not add it up.
  • Next, you show that your idea is not a static flash of genius.
    Rather, there are market forces driving the idea, and you are taking advantage of a brief market window that has opened.
    (And you’ve admitted that there will be competition, showing that you’re not naive about business realities.)
  • Because the brain pays attention to things that are in motion, you paint a picture of the idea moving out of an old market into a new one. Doing it this way, you don’t trigger change blindness, which would make your deal easy to neglect.
  • Last, you bring the big idea into play using the idea introduction pattern. Now the target knows exactly what it is, who it’s for, who you compete with, and what your idea does better than the competition’s. This simple pattern makes sure that your idea is easy to grasp and focuses on what is real. This strategy works so well because it avoids triggering a threat response.” (108-109)

“You can underwhelm the target with too little information just as easily as you can overwhelm him with too much information.” (110)

“If you’re describing relationships between people, you can provide plenty of detail. The brain is really good at understanding complex human relationships.” (111)

“Realization 1: It doesn’t matter how much information you give, a lot or a little, but instead how good your theory of mind is. In other words, it’s important how well you can tune your information to the other person’s mind.
Realization 2: All the important stuff must fit into the audience’s limits of attention, which for most people is about 20 minutes.” (111)

“Attention will be given when information novelty is high and will drift away when information novelty is low. You already know this. If your stuff looks boring, if it has no visual stimulus, is a bunch of cold, hard facts and involves spaghetti-like complexity— no one is going to offer you much attention.” (112)

“What they’ve worked out is that when a person is feeling both desire and tension, that person is paying serious attention to what’s in front of him or her.” (113)

“brain scans show that dopamine isn’t exactly the chemical of experiencing pleasure.
Instead, it’s the chemical of anticipating a reward.” (114)

“You create novelty by violating the target’s expectations in a pleasing way.” (114)

“Let’s review. When you introduce something novel to the target’s brain, a release of dopamine occurs. This triggers desire. For example:Just like the martini making we talked about earlier, the amount of dopamine in the cocktail has to be just right. Not enough, and there is no interest in your or your ideas; too much, and there is fear or anxiety.” (115)

“It has been argued that people are curious about things they cannot explain but that seem explainable” (116)

“Curiosity is the croc brain becoming interested-feeling like it’s safe to learn more. Curiosity derives from an information gap-the difference between what you know and what you want to know. This is the addictive quality of curiosity— and what you are trying to create for the target: curiosity about the big idea.” (116)

“It’s only when the target feels that he knows enough to fully understand your big idea that the curiosity ends—and he becomes satiated. At that point of satiation, whether you recognize it or not, the pitch is over.” (116)

“Tension is the introduction of some real consequences to the social encounter. It’s the response to a clear and unequivocal realization that something will be gained or lost. It is letting the target know that there are high stakes. Tension indicates consequences and therefore importance.” (117)

“Tension comes from conflict. Some beginning presenters want to rely on their charisma (a pure form of novelty) and try to avoid all conflict in their pitch narrative. They want everyone to play nice.
Only smiles, no grimaces… But in narrative- and frame-based pitching, you can’t be afraid of tension. In fact, you have to create it.” (118)

“Low-Key, Low-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
PUSH: “There’s a real possibility that we might not be right for each other.”
[Pause. Allow the push to sink in. It must be authentic.]
PULL: “But then again, if this did work out, our forces could combine to become something great.”

Medium-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
PUSH: “There’s so much more to a deal than just the idea.
I mean, there’s a venture-capital group in San Francisco that doesn’t even care what the idea is—they don’t even look at it when a deal comes in. The only thing they care about is who the people are behind the deal. That makes sense. I’ve learned that ideas are common, a dime a dozen. What really counts is having someone in charge who has passion and experience and integrity. So if you and I don’t have that view in common, it would never work between us.” (Pause.]
PULL: “But that’s crazy to think. Obviously you value people over smart ideas. I’ve met corporate robots before that only care about numbers—and you are definitely not a robot.”

High-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
PUSH: “Based on the couple of reactions I’m getting from you-it seems like this isn’t a good fit. I think that you should only do deals where there is trust and deals you strongly believe in. So let’s just wrap this up for now and agree to get together on the next one.”
Pause. Wait for a response. Start packing up your stuff. Be willing to leave if the target doesn’t stop you.]” (118-119)

“This is a confidence problem. I used to be afraid of creating tension. I was afraid to do anything that might upset the target in any way. Sure, when you and the target are each nodding in happy agreement, it feels great in the moment. You think to yourself, it’s a lovefest. But when it goes on too long with no counterbalance— it’s boring. At the end, the target gets up and says, “That was really nice,” and then walk away. Targets want a challenge of some sort.
They don’t want the easy answers.
If there’s a single reason why some of my most important pitches failed, it’s because I was nice and the audience was nice, and we were all very polite with each other. There was no tension or conflict. Conflict is the basis of interesting human connections.” (122)

“In clear and concise terms, tell the audience exactly what you will be delivering to them, when it will be delivered, and how. If they play a part in this process, explain what their roles and responsibilities will be. Don’t drill down into a lot of detail.” (127)

“Hot cognition 1: the intrigue frame.
Hot cognition 2: the prize frame.
Hot cognition 3: the time frame.
Hot cognition 4: the moral authority frame.” (137)

“Nobody cares about narratives where you witnessed something. They want to see someone forced into action and positively overcoming obstacles.” (138)

“The targets have given you their time because they want to visit a new world to learn about new things and interesting ideas and become involved in the lives of unique, interesting, and talented people.” (139)

“People want to know how you have faced obstacles and overcome them. They want to see you in situations that reveal your character. They want to know that you are someone who rises to whatever level necessary to overcome obstacles and someone who travels in the company of interesting people who are players in whatever game you are playing.” (139)

“Short and strong narratives that introduce characters who are overcoming real-world obstacles can ignite hot cognitions which, in turn, push the target out of paradigmatic and analytical thinking mode.” (140)

“Here’s a pattern that will give any of your stories a dramatic ar that ends with intrigue:

  • Put a man in the jungle.
  • Have beasts attack him.
  • Will he get to safety?
    Clearly, being stuck in the jungle is a metaphor for being in a difficult situation. The attacking beasts are the conflict and tension.
    These are the problems being faced by the man and the motivation for him to start moving toward safety. Once he is out of the jun-gle, the tension is resolved and the narrative arc is complete, so hold the man just short of safety as long as you want to use the intrigue frame.” (141)

“Things don’t always need to be told in terms of extreme events— but they always should be extreme in terms of the character’s emotional experience. This is what makes a good narrative.” (141)

“When we listen to your narrative, it’s not what happens to you that makes vou interesting. but it’s what you do about the situation you are in.” (141)

““We have your bios and know your reputation. But we have to be cautious about who we bring on board. And I have to sell you to my partner, Joshua—who is going to want to know why I think you would be good partners. Can you give me that—can you tell me why we would enjoy working with you?”

So what have I done in such a statement? I’ve delivered the prize frame, and the basic elements include

  1. I have one of the better deals in the market.
  2. I am choosy about who I work with.
  3. It seems like I could work with you, but really, I need to know more.
  4. Please start giving me some materials on yourself.
  5. I still need to figure out if we would work well together and be good partners.
  6. What did your last business partners say about you?
  7. When things go sideways in a deal, how do you handle it?
  8. My existing partners are choosy.” (145)

“Here’s the internal pattern, the words you say to yourself to fully activate and deploy the prize frame:
I am the prize.
You are trying to impress me.
You are trying to win my approval.” (146)

“the addition of time pressure to a decision making event reduces decision quality.” (147)

“Here’s the time frame pattern you can use and follow:
“Guys, nobody likes time pressure. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it. No one does. But good deals with strong fundamentals are like an Amtrak train, or more like a deal train. They stop at the station, pick up investors, and have a set departure time. And when it’s time the train has to leave the station.
“You have plenty of time to decide if you like me- and if you want this deal. If you don’t love it, there’s no way you should do it; we all know that.
“But this deal is bigger than me, or you or any one person; th deal is going ahead. There’s a critical path, a real timeline tha everyone has to work with. So we need to decide by the 15th.”” (147)

“”Selling” tempts you to do the three things I dislike the most:
(1) supplicate;
(2) make rational appeals to the neocortex, and.
(3) ask invasive questions. Hot cognitions, on the other hand, do not hit the target like a sales technique.”” (153)

“Reality isn’t waiting to be discovered. It’s waiting to be framed.” (156)

“Neediness is a signal of threat. If you display neediness, it is perceived as just the kind of threat that the crocodile brain wants to avoid. Neediness results in avoidance.” (161)

“Communicate loudly and clearly, that you are needed somewhere else. But this is just a part of a broader, more comprehensive solution to eradicating neediness. Here’s the basic formula:

  1. Want nothing.
  2. Focus only on things you do well.
  3. Announce your intention to leave the social encounter.” (165)

“Eliminate your desires. It’s not necessary to want things.
Sometimes you have to let them come to you.
Be excellent in the presence of others. Show people one thing
that you are very good at.
Withdraw. At a crucial moment, when people are expecting
you to come after them, pull away.” (167)

“My research had shown that the small talk at the beginning of a pitch typically was fruitless. People who make million and billion dollar decisions don’t care where you play golf or whether you had trouble finding a parking spot. I had learned this early on and avoided the deep rapport trap that many pitchmen step into. I would be focused, instead, on a unique theme and storyline. A compelling human drama.” (183)

“Any product that your target consciously or subconsciously believes will enhance his social image will get his brain hot with desire. Show the brain something that society values, and you won’t just be hitting hot buttons, you’ll be stomping on them.”

“Here are the most important terms for you to know and to own personally:
Frame control
Power-busting frame
Frame collisions
Prizing
Beta traps
Seizing status
Local star power
Push/pull
Alpha
Hot cognition
Crocodile brain
Neocortex” (217)

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