328 Quotes by Charles Duhigg

Bromates are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, but officials are required to test for them only when water leaves a treatment plant.

You have to actually believe in your capacity to change for habits to permanently change.

Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving.

Most shoppers don't buy everything they need at one store.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.

Stock exchanges say that more than half of all trades are now executed by just a handful of high-frequency traders, who use rapid-fire computers to essentially force slower investors to give up profits, then disappear before anyone knows what happened.

In 1980, a woman promised her dying sister to change how Americans thought about breast cancer. Thirty years later, the result - the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation - is one of the nation's largest non-profits, and one of the most successful triumphs in public health marketing and changing health habits.

Not so long ago, companies that borrowed lots of money were considered risky, appropriate only for daredevil stock pickers. Those with lots of cash on hand and few outstanding debts might be dull stocks, but they were at least safe bets for bondholders.

In a sense, habits never really disappear. Once formed, they always remain in our neurology.