Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

in a more sensible world, economics would be a subdiscipline of psychology.

the novelist Upton Sinclair once remarked, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’

We don’t value things; we value their meaning. What they are is determined by the laws of physics, but what they mean is determined by the laws of psychology.

what biologists call ‘costly signalling theory’, the fact that the meaning and significance attached to a something is in direct proportion to the expense with which it is communicated.

‘Credo quia absurdum est’, said Saint Augustine, supposedly – ‘I believe it because it is ridiculous.’

a Caribbean proverb, ‘Trust grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the speed of a coconut.’

The Soviets soon found that, without a maker’s name attached to a product, no one had any incentive to make a quality product,

Blame, unlike credit, always finds a home,