When we treat people like human beings, the whole process becomes human. When we treat people like robots or like numbers, the whole process becomes inhuman. And in this day and age, humanity is something we're struggling to find.

I can work on 'Saturday Night Live' or I can work on 'Chappelle's Show' or I can do a Netflix special... If I don't like it, if I'm not happy doing it, fuck it. What's the point? So I can say I did it? I have enough that I can say I did.

We can bring lottery winners into the laboratory and test their happiness. We could study different Olympic medalists. What you find is that the happiness that you predict you're going to get, it's never as high as you think, but also, more importantly, you're never as happy for as long as you think.

I think social media has been the technology that has deranged us ... We have effectively been enrolled in a psychological experiment to which no one gave consent. And there was so little foresight around what each feature of this technology would do to us or would be likely to do to us—everything from the like button onward. And it has just been terrible. I just think it's been bad for society in almost every respect.

Ideas don't happen when we're connected; ideas happen when our minds have an opportunity to wander.

Allowing ourself these disengaged times is absolutely essential for innovation; it's absolutely essential for problem-solving; it's absolutely essential for creativity.

I've actually said that at times... 'Can we look at this pessimistically?' ... I think you're more prone to make mistakes if you assume things are going to go well.

I think Trump is the worst person who has ever been president of the United States. That is obvious to me. It's a terrible misfortune that we have gotten ourselves in this position where we've spent three and a half years with this man as president. He's done immense harm to our country, our standing in the world, our society, our credibility.

[This is an] extremely simple question to ask... someone who's depressed: Ask them, 'Is there something you're doing or trying to do that seems so important you can't possibly give it up even though it's pretty clear you're never going to succeed?'

The human species basically has two parts to their brain: They have their logical part and then there's the emotional part ... You don't want to let the emotional part stand in the way of the logical part in order to make the best decisions possible.

The first two hours of the day are generally hours that people have high cognitive capacity ... 9 to 11 are usually very good hours for people. And if you come to the office at 9, and you have kind of high capacity, and in the first two hours you do email and Facebook... The hours that you have high capacity are so precious. You have a few of those a day, and they're so much more productive than the hours after lunch where you can hardly function.

Ultimately, the thing about stand-up is, and in general, whoever writes the most good jokes is the most successful, period.

We now know there are a lot of genes that influence whether you get a mental illness or not, but they're almost all influencing things by 1% or less.

The best organizations give their frontline employees the discretion to make decisions.

Most shoplifting happens by employees. The numbers that I've heard are astonishing—that the average retail store suffers 10% losses from shoplifting, most of which is by employees ... If you look at the best led organizations, they suffer like 2 and 3% shoplifting numbers, like they're much, much lower.

Acting doesn't come about by having very general plans of what to do in life; action comes from having concrete plans and even putting it into your calendar and saying when you're going to do it.

I have a quote in the book from a French philosopher that says 'Life is the C between B and D' ... 'B stands for birth. So, D stands for death, and C, life, stands for choice.

The reason employees really want to take care of us is because, usually, those employees really feel taken care of.

We have to get some distance from, or at least notice an alternative to, being taken in by our own opinions. We don't have to believe every one of our thoughts. We don't have to form an opinion about all the things we form opinions about so readily, and we certainly don't have to do it as quickly as we do. And even when we have an opinion, we can hold it much more lightly than we do.

It turns out that the simple act of scribbling down 3-5 things you're grateful for at the end of the day can significantly improve your well-being in as little as two weeks.