Book Excerpt: Practical Wisdom

We do need rules to guide and govern the behavior of people who are not wise: one reason we suffered the recent financial crisis was because weak and loosely enforced rules and regulations allowed shrewd money-making schemes like derivatives to run amok. But tighter rules and regulations, however necessary, are pale substitutes for wisdom … At the same time, rules alone guarantee mediocrity — forcing the truly motivated to become outlaws, rule-breakers pursuing a kind of guerrilla war to achieve excellence — and risk squeezing out wisdom.

— Adapted from Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, by arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA).