“The clearest evidence that justice is the most important of all the virtues comes from what happens when you remove it. It’s remarkably stark: The presence of injustice instantly renders any act of virtue—courage, discipline, wisdom—any skill, any achievement, worthless…or worse.”

The great promise of gene editing is that it will transform medicine. The peril is that it will widen the healthcare divide between rich and poor.

When conflict escalates past a certain point, the conflict itself takes charge. The original facts and forces that led to the dispute fade into the background. The us-versus-them dynamic takes over. Actual differences of opinion on health care policy or immigration stop mattering, and the conflict becomes its own reality. High conflict is the invisible hand of our time.

There is one skill that lies at the heart of any healthy person, family, school, community organization, or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen—to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.

We bring up kids to make their own choices. We don’t teach them to place all their trust in external authority - political, religious, or philosophical.

The American Dream’s narrowly defined paths to happiness and success rely on an acceptance of prescribed roles, and a lot of accumulation and exhibition.

As the plant grows, the stem uncoils, revealing new leaves, tender at first, rough at last. The fruit appears at the end of a cycle, growing from a stem that bends toward the ground under its own weight.

Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it.

The relentless overload that’s wearing us down is generated by a belief that “good” work requires increasing busyness—faster responses to email and chats, more meetings, more tasks, more hours.

The key to using optimism to enhance resilience is in rejecting black-and-white, either/or thinking. Resilient people use both optimism and pessimism strategically to gain the critical insights and information they need to adjust to change.

Companies are often faced with a predicament about whether to play it safe and maximize their resources (known as exploitation) or look to new products, areas, or partnerships for growth (known as exploration).

Crime works best, he says, not with overpowering force but when nobody knows it’s being committed.

We’re living in what they call the ‘information age,’ but life only seems to be making less sense. We’re isolated, listless, burnt out on screens, cutting loved ones out like tumors in the spirit of “boundaries,” failing to understand other people’s choices or even our own.

A “no-nonsense” woman is “cold,” “bitchy,” and disliked. If she expresses frustration or anger at being treated unfairly, or even asks for help, she is considered less competent and less deserving of pay or reward.

I always find more answers in a forest than in my own hot attic of a mind.

Something about today feels so full of hope.

If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

Perhaps the most accurate term for happiness, then, is the one Aristotle used: eudaimonia, which translates not directly to “happiness” but to “human flourishing.”

They subtly reflected shifts in other people’s moods and attitudes.

NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING, SO DO WHAT YOU WANT.