130 Quotes by Steven D. Levitt

The broken window theory argues that minor nuisances, if left unchecked, turn into major nuisances: that is, if someone breaks a window and sees it isn’t fixed immediately, he gets the signal that it’s all right to break the rest of the windows and maybe set the building afire too.

The fact is that solving problem is hard. If a given problem still exists, you can bet that a lot of people have already come along and failed to solve it. Easy problems evaporate; it is the hard ones that linger. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to track down, organize, and analyze the data to answer one small question well.

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

Nor should failure be considered a total loss.

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

Journalists need experts as badly as experts need journalists.

Think about all the time, brainpower, and social or political capital you continued to spend on some commitment only because you didn't like the idea of quitting.

When moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight.

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