Even small cults are a serious cost on the world economy, to victims, their families, employers, friends, and credit-card companies.

Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

High status males had multiple wives or additional mating opportunities in the ancestral environment.

As for leadership, I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president.

Successful cult memes induce intense social interaction behaviour between cult members. This trips the attention detectors.

If anyone wonders why the airlines are not doing well it is because flying has been made such an unpleasant and degrading experience.

Primates will continue to play social games without the least insight into what is killing them.

Cult recruiting methods based on dosing victims with the brain chemicals released during capture bonding would make cults even more of a problem than they are now.

Could people be trained to be less gullible? Or are you as stuck with gullibility as you are with skin colour?

Anyone who has ever had the feeling of being higher than a kite after giving a public speech is well aware of the effects of attention.

Cults, or related social movements such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, result in massive military expenses.

Be happy without picking flaws.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

The theory of mechanism design can be thought of as the 'engineering' side of economic theory.

I seem to always start a collection by designing outerwear and jackets.

It doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

You can if you think you can.

Greed (as Ling): You humans always get all "holier-than-thou" when it comes to this stuff... I really don't get you. Edward: It's called having integrity. You should try it sometime

Despite the impression you may have from watching too much TV, movies are not about reproducing reality. Theyre about telling stories.

In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.

Though I am not always responsible for what happens to me, I am responsible for how I handle what happens to me.