Unlike earlier thinkers, who had sought to improve their accuracy by getting rid of error, Laplace realized that you should try to get more error: aggregate enough flawed data, and you get a glimpse of the truth. "The genius of statistics, as Laplace defined it, was that it did not ignore errors; it quantified them," the writer Louis Menand observed. "...The right answer is, in a sense, a function of the mistakes.

both doubt and certainty are as contagious as the common cold

The kinds of things that we can make mistakes about are essentially unlimited in number.

without being sure of something, we can not begin to think about everything elses

Regret doesn't remind us that we did badly, it reminds us that we know that we could do better.

Parading our own brilliance and exulting in other people's errors is not very nice. For that matter, even wanting to parade our own brilliance and exult in other people's errors is not very nice, although it is certainly very human.

The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.