“If you show up at the gym 5 days in a row—even for 2 minutes—you're casting votes for your new identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. Youre focused on becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts”

“social anxiety is overwhelmingly common. Natural selection shaped us to care enormously what other people think..We constantly monitor how much others value us..Low self-esteem is a signal to try harder to please others”

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents...Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without a believe in a devil.”

"if politics becomes a morality pageant, then the contestants have an incentive to keep problems intact...politics becomes a forum to show off moral qualities...people will be dedicated to activism for its own sake, as a vehicle to preen"

“Across diverse cultures, a man who lives in the house with another man’s children is about 60 times more likely than the biological father to kill those children.”

"In this ritual, members of a group compete for status and show their loyalty by how vicious they can be to an 'outsider.' Pleading, fighting, passivity will be interpreted as proof of 'otherness' and justification to escalate."

Children born to unmarried mothers

Upper class in 1977: 5%
Working class in 1977: 22%

Upper class in 2007: 10%
Working class in 2007: 65%

Soviet authorities purged those who were "too independent, too influential, along with those who were too well-to-do, too intelligent, too noteworthy...Thus the population was shaken up, forced into silence, left without any possible leaders of resistance"

“Roughly 30 percent of men on the Tinder app, which is widely regarded as a short-term mating app, are married.”

"those who lost jobs were more likely to kill themselves in the subsequent year than those who had not lost jobs...effect was particularly strong for men: those who lost jobs were 2-3 times more likely to have killed themselves"

"Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, Alexander envied Hercules, who never existed...get away from envy by avoiding comparisons w/ those you imagine, perhaps falsely, to be more fortunate than yourself"

"having worked as a doctor in some of the poorest countries...I have little hesitation in saying the mental, cultural, emotional, impoverishment of the Western underclass is the greatest of any large group of people I've encountered"