You need to take your gut feeling as an important data point, but then you have to consciously and deliberately evaluate it, to see if it makes sense in this context.

Rigor is not a substitute for imagination.

I worry about leaders in complex situations who don't have enough experience, who are just going with their intuition and not monitoring it, not thinking about it.

There needs to be a certain structure to a situation, a certain predictability that allows you to have a basis for the intuition.

People sometimes are so confident in their flawed beliefs that they get stuck - fixated - and as a result are blinded to insights that are right in front of them.

By the time executives get to high levels, they are good at making others feel confident in their judgment, even if there's no strong basis for the judgment.

Slow adaptation is driven by forces such as evolution. Fast adaptation is driven by forces such as insight.

You need strategies that help rule things out. That's the opposite of saying, "This is what my gut is telling me; let me gather information to confirm it."

If a situation is very, very turbulent, it has low validity, and there's no basis for intuition.

Many business intuitions and expertise are going to be valuable; they are telling you something useful, and you want to take advantage of them.

You shouldn't trust the judgments of stock brokers picking individual stocks.

Courage is stepping forward when all you can see is darkness.

As a young man on the streets of Derry, I saw Ian Paisley as an immortal opponent of everything to do with equality, justice, fairness, and respect for Irishness.

49 and holding. Holding tight! Fighting that heinous age every step of the way.

Playing baseball is not real life. It's a fantasy world... It's a dream come true.

Laughter is one of the great beacons in life because we don't refract it by gunning it through our intellectual prism. What makes us laugh is a mystery - an involuntary response.

Science has not been successful by making up explanations of things that fit with the current social fabric.

Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Your shallow men shall dream, dreams, your insightful men shall see visions.

At the time I wrote Xone I had never been on the Internet.

You're my life now and I will do anything to protect you.