We're terrified of not having the answers, and we would sometimes rather assert an incorrect answer than make our peace with the fact that we really don't know.

Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that?

If it is sweet to be right, then - let's not deny it - it is downright savory to point out that someone else is wrong.

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.

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.

The inability to experience regret is one of the diagnostic characteristics of sociopaths.

Thirty-three percent of all of our regrets pertain to decisions we made about education.