Daniel Kahneman Quotes - Page 4

A plan is only a scenario, and almost by definition, it is optimistic... As a result, scenario planning can lead to a serious underestimate of the risk of failure.

If there was one ubiquitous recommendation about marriage it was this: "Don't go to bed angry."

Human beings cannot comprehend very large or very small numbers. It would be useful for us to acknowledge that fact.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly delusional variety, may be a good thing.

It's a wonderful thing to be optimistic. It keeps you healthy and it keeps you resilient.

The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.

All of us would be better investors if we just made fewer decisions.

Most of the moments of our life - and I calculated, you know, the psychological present is said to be about three seconds long; that means that, you know, in a life there are about 600 million of them; in a month, there are about 600,000 - most of them don't leave a trace.

The amount of success it takes for leaders to become overconfident isn't terribly large.

To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals' experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes.

People assign much higher probability to the truth of their opinions than is warranted.

In strategic decisions, I'd be really concerned about overconfidence.

We have a very narrow view of what is going on.

One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent.

We deeply want to be led by people who know what they're doing and who don't have to think about it too much.

If you can't take the time for a vacation right now, or even a night out with friends, put something on the calendar - even if it's a month or a year down the road. Then whenever you need a boost of happiness, remind yourself about it.

We're generally overconfident in our opinions and our impressions and judgments.

The most effortful forms of slow thinking are those that require you to think fast.

Laziness is built deep into our nature.

It's not a case of: 'Read this book and then you'll think differently. I've written this book, and I don't think differently.

Unfortunately, skill in evaluating the business prospects of a firm is not sufficient for successful stock trading, where the key question is whether the information about the firm is already incorporated in the price of the stock. Traders apparently lackthe skill to answer this crucial question, but they appear to be ignorant of their ignorance.

In essence, the optimistic style involves taking credit for successes but little blame for failures.

Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person - you already feel fortunate.

People exaggerate their confidence in their plans - something we call the planning fallacy... The existence of the plan tends to induce overconfidence.