Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough. - P29
Today’s economy is good at generating three things: wealth, the ability to show off wealth, and great envy for other people’s wealth. - P31
A little success was a win; a big success felt like a miracle. - P33
What generates the emotion is the big gap between expectations and reality. - P33
Same with expectations—they’re easy to ignore because their value isn’t on a price tag. But your happiness completely relies on expectations. - P33
The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism. - P34
One is the constant reminder that wealth and happiness is a two-part equation: what you have and what you expect/need. - P34
The other is to understand how the expectation game is played. - P34
Something that’s built into the human condition is that people who think about the world in unique ways you like almost certainly also think about the world in unique ways you won’t like. - P36
Novelist Stefan Zweig said, "History reveals no instances of a conqueror being surfeited by conquests," meaning no conqueror gets what they wish and then retires. - P42
"You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after," John Boyd once said. - P43
People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty. - P44
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell - P44
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