It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one.

Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave.

Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship, upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.

To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week's newspapers.

A mistake is not something to be determined after the fact, but in the light of the information until that point.