“[W]hat is most important to us, most of the time, is not the objective results of a decision, but the subjective results.”

Source: The Paradox of Choice (2004)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[W]hat is most important to us, most of the time, is not the objective results of a decision, but the subjective result…" by Barry Schwartz?
Barry Schwartz photo
Barry Schwartz 17
American psychologist 1946

Related quotes

John Napier photo

“Arrange all these results as described, and you will produce a Table, certainly the most excellent of all Mathematical tables, and prepared for the most important uses.”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

The Construction of the Wonderful Canon of Logarithms (1889)
Context: From the Radical table completed in this way, you will find with great exactness the logarithms of all sines between radius and the sine 45 degrees; from the arc of 45 degrees doubled, you will find the logarithm of half radius; having obtained all these, you will find the other logarithms. Arrange all these results as described, and you will produce a Table, certainly the most excellent of all Mathematical tables, and prepared for the most important uses.

Jonah Goldberg photo

“[W]hat makes a libertarian in America a “right-winger” makes him a “liberal” in most of Europe.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Ivan Illich photo

“Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.”

Ritualization of Progress.
Deschooling Society (1971)
Context: Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being "with it," yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“The less one, as a result of objective or subjective conditions, has to come into contact with people, the better off one is for it.”

Je weniger einer, in Folge objektiver oder subjektiver Bedingungen, nötig hat, mit den Menschen in Berührung zu kommen, desto besser ist er daran.
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

“[W]hat the dictatorship wants is presented as something we should want more. Most calls for subversion enrage the North. Not these though. Never these.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

“The world moves into the future as a result of decisions, not as a result of plans. Plans are significant only insofar as they affect decisions.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1970s, Toward a General Social Science, 1974, p. 8

David Hume photo

“The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject.”

Part XV - General corollary
The Natural History of Religion (1757)
Context: The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

Jean Piaget photo

“The intentionality peculiar to motor activity is not a search for truth but the pursuit of a result, whether objective or subjective; and to succeed is not to discover a truth.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism <!-- p. 93 -->
Context: Generally speaking, one can say that motor intelligence contains the germs of completed reason. But it gives promise of more than reason pure and simple. From the moral as from the intellectual point of view, the child is born neither good nor bad, but master of his destiny. Now, if there is intelligence in the schemas of motor adaptation, there is also the element of play. The intentionality peculiar to motor activity is not a search for truth but the pursuit of a result, whether objective or subjective; and to succeed is not to discover a truth.

Max Planck photo

“The first and most important quality of all scientific ways of thinking must be the clear distinction between the outer object of observation and the subjective nature of the observer.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Where is science going? The Universe in the light of modern physics. (1932)

Related topics