Steven Levitt Quotes: top 78 famous quotes about Steven Levitt

Steven Levitt Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Steven Levitt quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

A person who is lying or cheating will often respond to an incentive differently than an honest person. — Steven D. Levitt

An opponent who feels his argument is ignored isn't likely to engage with you at all. — Steven D. Levitt

Wall Street is populated by a bunch of people whose primary goal is to make money, and the rules are pretty much caveat emptor. — Steven Levitt

When people don't pay the true cost of something, they tend to consume it inefficiently. — Steven D. Levitt

Just Like Canada, with Better Bacon — Steven D. Levitt

Most people are too busy to rethink the way they think - or to even spend much time thinking at all. — Steven D. Levitt

Good social media is authentic. What makes social media work is actually having something to say. — Steven Levitt

It's much better to ask small questions than big ones. — Steven D. Levitt

Ideas nearly always seem brilliant when they're hatched, so we never act on a new idea for at least twenty-four hours. — Steven D. Levitt

Conventional wisdom in Galbraith's view must be simple, convenient, comfortable and comforting - though not necessarily true. — Steven D. Levitt

There are three basic flavours of incentive: economic, social and moral. — Steven D. Levitt

Come up with a terrible idea? No problem - just don't act on it. — Steven D. Levitt

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work. — Steven D. Levitt

Is distinctive black culture the cause of economic disparity between whites and blacks or merely the reflection of it? — Steven D. Levitt

An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation — Steven D. Levitt

No matter how expert you may be, well-designed checklists can improve outcomes. — Steven Levitt

The gulf between the information we proclaim & the information we know to be true is vast. In other words: we say one thing & do another. — Steven Levitt

If you really accept that global warming puts the world at risk, then you think you would be open to any solution that could undo it. — Steven Levitt

The most obvious things are often right there, but you don't think about them because you've narrowed your vision. — Steven Levitt

Poverty is a symptom - of the absence of a workable economy built on credible political, social, and legal institutions. — Steven D. Levitt

Have fun, think small, don't fear the obvious. — Steven D. Levitt

If it takes a lot of courage to admit you don't know all the answers, just imagine how hard it is to admit you don't even know the right question. — Steven D. Levitt

As the Inuits say, "Gifts make slaves, as whips make dogs. — Steven D. Levitt

Don't listen to what people say; watch what they do. — Steven D. Levitt

It is often possible to elicit the behavior you want through nonfinancial means. — Steven D. Levitt

Never, ever think that people will do something just because it is the "right" thing to do. — Steven D. Levitt

Vegans are still considered as sort of "out there," a fringe group of animal rights activists with pasty skin and protein issues. However, — Steven D. Levitt

When failure is demonized, people will try to avoid it at all costs - even when it represents nothing more than a temporary setback. — Steven D. Levitt

As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for. — Steven D. Levitt

Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent
all depending on who wields it and how. — Steven D. Levitt

Nor should failure be considered a total loss. — Steven D. Levitt

The conventional wisdom is often wrong. — Steven D. Levitt

Mullaney often took the subway to visit the client. His ride sometimes coincided with the end of the school day; — Steven D. Levitt

Borody claims to have used fecal transplants to effectively cure people who were suffering from ulcerative colitis - which, he says, was — Steven D. Levitt

Could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon — Steven D. Levitt

An expert must be BOLD if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into
conventional wisdom. — Steven D. Levitt

Another cardinal rule of thinking like a child: don't be afraid of the obvious. — Steven D. Levitt

If you really want to persuade someone who doesn't wish to be persuaded, you should tell him a story. — Steven D. Levitt

Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories. — Steven Levitt

Failure may be an option but quitting is not. — Steven D. Levitt

Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about. — Steven D. Levitt

The data don't lie: a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one. — Steven Levitt

Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame. — Steven D. Levitt

So when it comes to solving problems, channeling your inner child can really pay off. It all starts with thinking small. — Steven D. Levitt

The ECLS data do show, for instance, that a child with a lot of books in his home tends to test higher than a child with no books. — Steven D. Levitt

There is a difference between correlation and causation - many people mistake one for the other — Steven D. Levitt

If morality represents how people would like the world to work, then economics shows how it actually does work. — Steven D. Levitt

Most of us want to fix or change the world in some fashion. But to change the world, you first have to understand it. — Steven D. Levitt

Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you've decided beforehand it can't be done. — Steven D. Levitt

But being confident you are right is not the same as being right. — Steven D. Levitt

The swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is. — Steven D. Levitt

Levitt admits to having the reading interests of a tweener girl, the Twilight series and Harry Potter in particular. — Steven D. Levitt

Whatever the incentive, whatever the situation, dishonest people will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary. Or, — Steven D. Levitt

Purity is a good mask for corruption because it discourages inquiry. — Steven Levitt

Prediction," as Niels Bohr liked to say, "is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. — Steven D. Levitt

Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so. — Steven D. Levitt

Resources are not infinite: you cannot solve tomorrow's problem if you aren't willing to abandon today's dud. — Steven D. Levitt

Don't trust, just verify. — Steven Levitt

Goldstein found that on average, the people in his experiment "enjoy more expensive wines slightly less. — Steven D. Levitt

A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. — Steven D. Levitt

What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common? — Steven D. Levitt

it is even harder to persuade people who do not wish to be persuaded. — Steven D. Levitt

Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists. — Steven D. Levitt

As I see it, most major philanthropists have been bullied into giving. They feel social pressure to give. It has become a cost of doing business. — Steven Levitt

The fear created by commercial experts may not quite rival the fear created by terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan, but the principle is the same. — Steven D. Levitt

The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it. — Steven D. Levitt

Tetlock's words, even when their predictions prove — Steven D. Levitt

Whatever problem you're trying to solve, make sure you're not just attacking the noisy part of the problem that happens to capture your attention. — Steven D. Levitt

Overall, a portfolio of the "good to great" companies looks like it would have underperformed the S&P 500. — Steven D. Levitt

Scarcity is a captivating book, overflowing with new ideas, fantastic stories, and simple suggestions that just might change the way you live. — Steven Levitt

Would a diet high in omega-3 lead to world peace? — Steven D. Levitt

Kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don't contain methane. — Steven D. Levitt

If you are willing to confront the obvious, you will end up asking a lot of questions that others don't. — Steven D. Levitt

An expert whose argument reeks of restraint or nuance often doesn't get much attention. — Steven D. Levitt

As we suggested near the beginning of this book, if morality represents an ideal world, then economics represents the actual world. — Steven D. Levitt

For emotion is the enemy of rational argument. — Steven D. Levitt

I don't expect perfection, I expect excellence. I expect 100 percent effort in all you do. — Steven D. Levitt

Most of us have a lot more experience being consumers than producers, so we tend to view things through the lens of demand rather than supply. — Steven D. Levitt