I've debated many economists who claim to specialize in risk and probability: when one takes them slightly outside their narrow focus, but within the discipline of probability, they fall apart, with the disconsolate face of a gym rat in front of a gangster hit man.

Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.

The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference

It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don't say about themselves.

We cannot truly plan, because we do not understand the future-but this is not necessarily a bad news. We could plan while bearing in mind such limitations. It just takes guts.

The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.