86 Quotes by David McRaney

The future is the result of actions, and actions are the result of behavior, and behavior is the result of prediction.

Having a dissenting opinion on movies, music, or clothes, or owning clever or obscure possessions, is the way middle-class people fight one another for status...Hipsters, then, are the direct result of this cycle of indie, authentic, obscure, ironic, clever consummerism...It is ironic in the sense the very act of trying to run counter to the culture is what creates the next wave of culture people will in turn attempt to counter.

THE MISCONCEPTION: You are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is. THE TRUTH: You are as deluded as the rest of us, but that’s OK, it keeps you sane.

Don’t let the Dunning-Kruger effect cast its shadow over you. If you want to be great at something, you have to practice, and then you have to sample the work of people who have been doing it for their whole lives. Compare and contrast and eat some humble.

You don’t believe you are an average person, but you do believe everyone else is. This tendency, which springs from self-serving bias, is called the illusory superiority effect.

One of the stranger facets of consistency bias is how it can be evoked on the spot. If you are primed to believe you are an honest person, you will then act as if you are.

Did we really put a man on the moon? If you are looking for proof we didn’t, you can find it.

Education is as much about learning what you don’t know as it is about adding to what you do.

When a kid asks, “But, why?” she is rightfully bringing to the attention of the adult world that all this stuff is just made up and mostly arbitrary nonsense often clung to for some long-forgotten reason.