I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.

Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.

When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate.

When we want to do something while unconsciously certain to fail, we seek advice so we can blame someone else for the failure.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history