Daniel Kahneman Quotes

“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.
These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“To derive the most useful information from multiple sources of evidence, you should always try to make these sources independent of each other.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“For example, students of policy have noted that the availability heuristic
helps explain why some issues are highly salient in the public's mind while
others are neglected. People tend to assess the relative importance of
issues by the ease with which they are retrieved from memory-and this is
largely determined by the extent of coverage in the media”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Much of the discussion in this book is about biases of intuition. However, the focus on error does not denigrate human intelligence, any more than the attention to diseases in medical texts denies good health.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“It is useful to remember, however, that neglecting valid stereotypes inevitably results in suboptimal judgments. Resistance to stereotyping is a laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the resistance is costless is wrong. The costs are worth paying to achieve a better society, but denying that the costs exist, while satisfying to the soul and politically correct, is not scientifically defensible.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“The experiment shows that individuals feel relieved of responsibility when they know that others have heard the same request for help. Did the results surprise you? Very probably. Most of us think of ourselves as decent people who would rush to help in such a situation, and we expect other decent people to do the same. The point of the experiment, of course, was to show that this expectation is wrong. Even normal, decent people do not rush to help when they expect others to take on the unpleasantness of dealing”

— Daniel Kahneman

“People adjust less (stay closer to the anchor) when their mental resources are depleted, either because their memory is loaded with digits or because they are slightly drunk.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“An organization is a factory that manufactures judgments and decisions. Every factory must have ways to ensure the quality of its products in the initial design, in fabrication, and in final inspections. The corresponding stages in the production of decisions are the framing of the problem that is to be solved, the collection of relevant information leading to a decision, and reflection and review. An organization that seeks to improve its decision product should routinely look for efficiency improvements at each of these stages. The”

— Daniel Kahneman

“The 'Instagram Generation' now experiences the present as an anticipated memory.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Walter Mischel and his students exposed four-year-old children to a cruel dilemma. They were given a choice between a small reward (one Oreo), which they could have at any time, or a larger reward (two cookies) for which they had to wait 15 minutes under difficult conditions.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Overconfidence: As the WYSIATI rule implies, neither the quantity nor the quality of the evidence counts for much in subjective confidence.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Why be concerned with gossip? Because it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable, to identify and label the mistakes of others than to recognize our own.”

— Daniel Kahneman

In the presence of randomness, regular patterns can only be mirages.

— Daniel Kahneman

“Most of us are pitch-perfect in detecting anger in the first word of a telephone call, recognize as we enter a room that we were the subject of the conversation, and quickly react to subtle signs that the driver of the car in the next lane is dangerous. Our everyday intuitive abilities are no less marvelous than the striking insights of an experienced firefighter or physician-only more common.”

— Daniel Kahneman

I propose a simple account of how we generate intuitive opinions on complex matters. If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I call the operation of answering one question in place of another substitution. I also adopt the following terms:

— Daniel Kahneman

“Jeremy Bentham opened his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with the famous sentence Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“However, the ability to control attention is not simply a measure of intelligence; measures of efficiency in the control of attention predict performance of air traffic controllers and of Israeli Air Force pilots beyond the effects of intelligence.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“A compelling narrative fosters an illusion of inevitability.”

— Daniel Kahneman

What people acquire with a ticket is more than a chance to win; it is the right to dream pleasantly of winning.

— Daniel Kahneman

“Happiness does not have a simple meaning and should not be used as if it does.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“And want is difficult at the best of times, and especially difficult when we most need to do it, but we can benefit”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Frequently mentioned topics populate the mind even as others slip away from awareness. In turn, what the media choose to report corresponds to their view of what is currently on the public's mind. It is no accident that authoritarian regimes exert substantial pressure on independent media.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Amos liked the idea of an adjust-and-anchor heuristic as a strategy for estimating uncertain quantities: start from an anchoring number, assess whether it is too high or too low, and gradually adjust your estimate by mentally "moving" from the anchor. The adjustment typically ends prematurely, because people stop when they are no longer certain that they should move farther.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Whenever we can replace human judgment by a formula, we should at least consider it.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Negotiations over a shrinking pie are especially difficult because they require an allocation of losses. People tend to be much more easygoing when they bargain over an expanding pie.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Friends are sometimes a big help when they share your feelings. In the context of decisions, the friends who will serve you best are those who understand your feelings but are not overly impressed by them.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders - not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks.”

— Daniel Kahneman

You know, the standard state for people is 'mildly pleasant.' Negative emotions are quite rare, and extremely positive emotions are rare. But people are mildly pleased most of the time, they're mildly tired a lot of the time, and they wish they were somewhere else a substantial part of the time - but mostly they're mildly pleased.

— Daniel Kahneman

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

— Daniel Kahneman

“It's very easy for trusted companies to mislead naive customers, and life insurance companies are trusted.”

— Daniel Kahneman

Mental effort, I would argue, is relatively rare. Most of the time we coast.

— Daniel Kahneman

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

— Daniel Kahneman

Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds. Optimistic overconfidence means you are taking the risk because you don't know the odds. It's a big difference.

— Daniel Kahneman

“If there is time to reflect, slowing down is likely to be a good idea.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“My impression is that the elimination of memories greatly reduces the value of the experience.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Clearly, the decision-making that we rely on in society is fallible. It's highly fallible, and we should know that.”

— Daniel Kahneman

Slow thinking has the feeling of something you do. It's deliberate.

— Daniel Kahneman

“It was always assumed I would be a professor. I grew up thinking it.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Doubting what you see is a very odd experience. And doubting what you remember is a little less odd than doubting what you see. But it's also a pretty odd experience, because some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them, and that happens to be the case even for memories that are not true.”

— Daniel Kahneman

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

— Daniel Kahneman

“It's clear that policymakers and economists are going to be interested in the measurement of well-being primarily as it correlates with health; they also want to know whether researchers can validate subjective responses with physiological indices.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions”

— Daniel Kahneman

A general limitation of the human mind is its imperfect ability to reconstruct past states of knowledge, or beliefs that have changed. Once you adopt a new view of the world (or any part of it), you immediately lose much of your ability to recall what you used to believe before your mind changed.

— Daniel Kahneman

“I don't try to be clever at all. The idea that I could see what no one else can is an illusion.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“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.”

— Daniel Kahneman

“Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty.”

— Daniel Kahneman

The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.

— Daniel Kahneman

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

— Daniel Kahneman