The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story the mind has managed to construct.

Many ideas happen to us. We have intuition, we have feeling, we have emotion, all of that happens, we don't decide to do it. We don't control it.

you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious.

I would not advise people to buy a car or house without making a list. You will probably improve your intuitions by making a list and then sleeping on it.

Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don't know the odds. It's a big difference.

Divorced women, compared to married women, are less satisfied with their lives, which is not surprising. But they're actually more cheerful, when you look at the average mood they're in in the course of the day.

Nobody would say, 'I'm voting for this guy because he's got the stronger chin,' but that, in fact, is partly what happens.