39 Quotes by Tim Wu

Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash.

kings and queens once depended on the mystique of inaccessibility as an expression of power.

It is a common enough mid-career urge: having taken care of life's immediate needs, some of us yearn to chase villains, right wrongs, fight on the side of the angels.

the lasting power of attentional habits is never to be underestimated

choices may be the cornerstone of individual freedom but, as the history of humanity shows, the urge to surrender to something larger and to transcend the self can be just as urgent, if not more so. The greatest propagandists and advertisers have always understood this.

any and all information that one consumes - pays attention to - will have some influence, even if just forcing a reaction. That idea, in turn, has a very radical implication, for it suggests that sometimes we overestimate our own capacity for truly independent thought.

We have already remarked how who we are can be defined, at least in part, by what we attend to - how much more so this is when what we attend to is determined less by our volition and more by ambience.

(talking about the habit of constantly checking for updates on email/FB/Twitter, etc.)The check-in would eventually become a widespread attentional habit; .....No other has compelled so many minds with such regularity - regularity that has the feel of a compulsion, of a mental itch constantly in need of being scratched.

As William James observed, we must reflect that, when we reach the end of our days, our life experience will equal what we have paid attention to, whether by choice or default. We are at risk, without quite fully realizing it, of living lives that are less our own than we imagine.