Many people will admit that they made a mistake [putting money in dot-coms or telecoms at their peak] But that doesn’t mean that they’ve changed their mind about anything in particular. It doesn’t mean that they are now able to avoid that mistake.

Overconfidence is a powerful source of illusions, primarily determined by the quality and coherence of the story that you can construct, not by its validity.

Acquisition of skills requires a regular environment, an adequate opportunity to practice, and rapid and unequivocal feedback about the correctness of thoughts and actions.

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

The amount of success it takes for leaders to become overconfident isn't terribly large.

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.

Our memory tells us stories, that is, what we get to keep from our experiences is a story.