The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the [investment management] industry.

It doesn't take many observations to think you've spotted a trend, and it's probably not a trend at all.

We have associations to things. We have, you know, we have associations to tables and to - and to dogs and to cats and to Harvard professors, and that's the way the mind works. It's an association machine.

In strategic decisions, I'd be really concerned about overconfidence.

Knowing the importance of luck, you should be particularly suspicious when highly consistent patterns emerge from the comparison of successful and less successful firms. In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.

Psychologists really aim to be scientists, white-coat stuff, with elaborate statistics, running experiments.

The psychologist, Paul Rozin, an expert on disgust, observed that a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches.