Quotes About Author

Atul Gawande's recent A Checklist Manifesto

Let's not fall for the outcome bias. This was a stupid decision even though it worked out well.

Indeed, we pay people quite well to provide interesting explanations of regression effects.

The aphorisms were judged more insightful when they rhymed than when they did not. Finally, if you quote a source, choose one with a name that is easy to pronounce.

Merely reminding people of a time when they had power increases their apparent trust in their own intuition.

Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following images: Image on page 19 courtesy of Paul Ekman Group.

the recommendations of Nudge require firms to offer contracts that are sufficiently simple to be read and understood by Human customers.

Every author, I suppose, has in mind a setting in which readers of his or her work could benefit from having read it.

perception of intention and emotion is irresistible; only people afflicted by autism do not experience it.

It is noteworthy, however, that we did not feel we needed information about other teams to make our guesses.

So far in this chapter, we have focused on predictive judgment tasks, and most of the judgments we will discuss are of that type.

investment decisions. Why be concerned with gossip? Because it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable

Venn diagrams apply only to probability, not to similarity. Hence the predictable logical error that many people make.

The most coherent stories are not necessarily the most probable, but they are plausible, and the notions of coherence, plausibility, and probability are easily confused by the unwary.

book titled Rationality and the Reflective Mind

I spend a few months each year in Berkeley, and one of my great pleasures there is a daily four-mile walk on a marked path in the hills, with a fine view of San Francisco Bay.

Amos was more conservative than I was about hunches, and he cor- rectly pointed out that appealing to suggestion did not help us understand anchoring, because we did not know how to explain suggestion.

Writing a novel, said Humboldt, seemed to him the perfect way to capture the most fleeting essence of the present for the future.

Punctuation, is? fun!

Worthy charity helps people. Unworthy charity that completely takes over a task makes recipients of such charity dependent.

the wealth and poverty gap observed between countries is predominately the result of differences in culture.

There's always a den mother in LSD groups, and in my experience it's usually a Goth girl.

a man on a scaffold throwing a tree at another man on another scaffold.