Steven D. Levitt quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Steven D. Levitt

Steven D. Levitt Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Steven D. Levitt on Wise Famous Quotes.

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

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

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

Just Like Canada, with Better Bacon

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

It's much better to ask small questions than big ones.

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

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

There are three basic flavours of incentive: economic, social and moral.

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

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

Is distinctive black culture the cause of economic disparity between whites and blacks or merely the reflection of it?

An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation

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

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

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

As W.C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

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

Have fun, think small, don't fear the obvious.

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

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.

It is often possible to elicit the behavior you want through nonfinancial means.

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

Don't listen to what people say; watch what they do.

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

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.

As the Inuits say, "Gifts make slaves, as whips make dogs.

Nor should failure be considered a total loss.

Decency can push almost any interaction into the cooperative frame.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

There is a difference between correlation and causation - many people mistake one for the other

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

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

Could any man resist the temptation of evil if he knew his acts could not be witnessed? Glaucon

Figure out what people really care about, not what they say they care about.

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

Failure may be an option but quitting is not.

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

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

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

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

But being confident you are right is not the same as being right.

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

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

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

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

Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.

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

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

A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything.

What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?

it is even harder to persuade people who do not wish to be persuaded.

Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists.

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.

The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.

Tetlock's words, even when their predictions prove

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.

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

Would a diet high in omega-3 lead to world peace?

Kangaroo farts, as fate would have it, don't contain methane.

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

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

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

For emotion is the enemy of rational argument.

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

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.