Rory's Greatest Hits
The Top 10 Rory Sutherland Quotes
A live ranking of the best Rory Sutherland quotes, voted for by readers — his sharpest lines from Alchemy, his TED talks and his Spectator columns. Found one you love? Tap the heart to push it up the chart.
The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense
A flower is simply a weed with an advertising budget.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy
We don't value things; we value their meaning. What they are is determined by the laws of physics, but what they mean is determined by the laws of psychology.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy
They have spent six billion pounds to reduce the journey time between Paris and London by about 40 minutes. For 0.01 percent of this money you could have put wi-fi on the trains, and for a further few million you could have hired the world's top supermodels, male and female, to walk up and down the train handing out free Chateau Petrus. You would still have about three billion pounds in change, and people would ask for the trains to be slowed down.
Rory Sutherland · TED Talk: Life lessons from an ad man
The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy
Test counterintuitive things, because no one else will.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy
The problem with logic is that it kills off magic.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy
Engineers, medical people, scientific people, have an obsession with solving the problems of reality, when actually most problems, once you reach a basic level of wealth in society, are actually problems of perception.
Rory Sutherland · TED Talk: Life lessons from an ad man
Flaws in a product, paradoxically, can build trust.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy
If there were a logical answer, we would have found it.
Rory Sutherland · Alchemy