450 Quotes by Daniel Kahneman

We're beautiful devices. The devices work well; we're all experts in what we do. But when the mechanism fails, those failures can tell you a lot about how the mind works.

I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success: I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers.

I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness.

An executive might have a very strong intuition that a given product has promise, without considering the probability that a rival is already ahead in developing the same product.

We know that the French are very different from the Americans in their satisfaction with life. They're much less satisfied. Americans are pretty high up there, while the French are quite low - the world champions in life satisfaction are actually the Danes.

The dominance of conclusions over arguments is most pronounced where emotions are involved.

When you are under time pressure for a decision, you need to follow intuition.

Yes, there is a burden of financial insecurity. I don't think you find it in mood. Income is correlated with life satisfaction, so maybe you do find it in life satisfaction. You don't find it in mood, and I think it is very important.

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