"Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people, because their threats are so much more convincing."
- Rory Sutherland
"Not everything that makes sense works, and not everything that works makes sense."
- Rory Sutherland
"Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. “Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000,” he replied. “And when he had that idea his feet were exactly where they are now."
- Rory Sutherland
"The most dangerous people were the stupid and energetic people because they’ll always do things and because they’re stupid they’ll do stupid things."
- Rory Sutherland
"When you demand logic, you pay a hidden price: you destroy magic."
- Rory Sutherland
"The number of people who think they understand statistics dangerously dwarfs those who actually do, and maths can cause fundamental problems when badly used."
- Rory Sutherland
"What matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal."
- Rory Sutherland
"For a business to be truly customer-focused, it needs to ignore what people say. Instead it needs to concentrate on what people feel."
- Rory Sutherland
"Andy Warhol about Coke: “The President of the United States can only get the same Coke as the bum in the street."
- Rory Sutherland
"As Bob Dylan says in Brownsville Girl: “People don’t do what they say they believe, they do what’s convenient and then they repent."
- Rory Sutherland
"Maybe attaching your brand name to some singing nuns would work perfectly well. It wouldn’t make any sense, but then neither does Christianity or Harry Potter, neither of which seem to suffer inordinately from the fact."
- Rory Sutherland
"Don’t design for average."
- Rory Sutherland
"Trust grows at the speed of a coconut tree and falls at the speed of a coconut.”"
- Rory Sutherland
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
- Rory Sutherland
"It is harder to like something when you haven’t chosen it."