Quotes from Margaret Heffernan

You cannot fix a problem that you refuse to acknowledge.

When we care about people, we care less about money, and when we care about money, we care less about people.

As long as it (an issue) remains invisible, it is guaranteed to remain insoluble.

The combination of power, optimism and abstract thinking makes powerful people more certain. The more cut-off they are from others, the more confident they are that they are right.

Being a critical thinker starts with resisting the urge to be a pleaser.

Silence is the language of inertia.

We know - intellectually - that confronting an issue is the only way to resolve it. But any resolution will disrupt the status quo. Given the choice between conflict and change on the one hand, and inertia on the other, the ostrich position can seem very attractive.

money appears to motivate only our interest in ourselves, making us selfish and self-centered...Money makes people feel self-sufficient, which also means they don't need or care about others; it's each man for himself

Humans do not have enough mental capacity to do all the things that we think we can do. As attentional load increases, attentional capacity gradually diminishes.

Overall, people are about twice as likely to seek information that supports their own point of view as they are to consider an opposing idea.19

On a voyage of exploration, how can you price what you'll find before you even set sail?

Those who consistently attempt multitasking find it harder to ignore irrelevant information and take longer moving between tasks—in other words, for all their frantic activity, they're actually wasting time. And

Dominant people, it appears, use snap judgements and conform to received wisdom more than do the less dominant. Those who need power, and those who have it, think differently.

according to the psychologist irving Janis, is that our sense of belonging (which makes us feel safe) blinds us to dangers and encourages greater risk-taking.

thinking: a rather prosaic, low-tech concept, easily forgotten and routinely underrated. But

Because it takes less brain power to believe than to doubt, we are, when tired or distracted, gullible.25 Because we are all biased, and biases are quick and effortless, exhaustion makes us favor the information we know and are comfortable with. We're too tired to do the heavier lifting of examining new or contradictory information, so we fall back on our biases, the opinions and the people we already trust.

Questions are the heart and soul of constructive conflict. They open up the exploration, bring in new information, and reframe debate. When

Indeed, there seems to be some evidence not only that all love is based on illusion — but that love positively requires illusion in order to endure.

In business," Siilasmaa said, "we forget that we are human. Many strong leaders think they should not be friends with their colleagues. I disagree. Business is emotional. I like to be friends with my colleagues. You get through a crisis because you care so much.

It's a truism that love is blind; what's less obvious is just how much evidence it can ignore.

the road to success is littered with mistakes, it matters more to build trust and encourage ambition than to reward obedience. At

It's when we stop and think that we rediscover the courage, wit, compassion, imagination, delight, frustration, discovery, and devotion that work can provoke—in short, all the things at work that do count, beyond measure.

The only consequence of their (employee) silence is that the blind (employer) lead the blind.

Over 100 years of research into productivity has shown that, after about forty hours a week, when we work longer, we make more mistakes – and the extra time goes to cleaning them up, the mess we made. 'We see it here in England and in the