Quotes from book
Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a best-selling book published in 2011 by Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman. It was the 2012 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps the public understanding of topics in behavioral science, engineering and medicine.The book summarizes research that Kahneman conducted over decades, often in collaboration with Amos Tversky. It covers all three phases of his career: his early days working on cognitive biases, his work on prospect theory, and his later work on happiness.The central thesis is a dichotomy between two modes of thought: "System 1" is fast, instinctive and emotional; "System 2" is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The book delineates cognitive biases associated with each type of thinking, starting with Kahneman's own research on loss aversion. From framing choices to people's tendency to replace a difficult question with one which is easy to answer, the book highlights several decades of academic research to suggest that people place too much confidence in human judgement.The book also shares many insights from Kahneman's work with the Israel Defense Forces and with the various departments and collaborators that have contributed to his growth as a thinker and researcher.

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“He's taking an inside view. He should forget about his own case and look for what happened in other cases.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 23, "The outside view", page 254 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“Experienced well-being is on average unaffected by marriage, not because marriage makes no difference to happiness, but because it changes some aspects of life for the better and others for the worse.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 38, "Thinking about life", pages 400-401 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“Subjective confidence in a judgement is not a reasoned evaluation of the probability that this judgement is correct. Confidence is a feeling, which reflects the coherence of the information and the cognitive ease of processing it. It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 20, "The illusion of validity", page 212 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“There is a deep gap between our thinking about statistics and our thinking about individual cases.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 15, "Causes trump statistics", page 174 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“Many unfortunate human situations unfold […] where people who face very bad options take desperate gambles, accepting a high probability of making things worse in exchange for a small hope of avoiding a large loss. Risk taking of this king often turns manageable failures into disasters.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 29, "The fourfold pattern", pages 318-319 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“A recurrent theme of this book is that luck plays a large role in every story of success; it is almost always easy to identify a small change in the story that would have turned a remarkable achievement into a mediocre outcome.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Introduction, page 9 (ISBN 9780141033570).
Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

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“A plausible interpretation is that higher income is associated with a reduced ability to enjoy the small pleasures of life. […] There is a clear contrast between the effects of income on experienced well-being and in life satisfaction. Higher income brings with it higher satisfaction, well beyond the point at which it ceases to have any positive effect on experience. […] Life satisfaction is not a flawed measure of their experienced well-being, as I thought some years ago. It is something else entirely.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 37, "Experienced well-being", page 397 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“Although humans are not irrational, they often need help to make more accurate judgements and better decisions. […] [They] also need protection from others who deliberately exploit their weaknesses […].”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Conclusions, pages 411-413 (ISBN 9780141033570).
Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

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“Unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of use passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 34, "Frames and reality", page 367 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“The lesson is clear: estimates of causes of death are warped by media coverage. […] The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 13, "Availability, emotion, and risk", page 138 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“He weights losses about twice as much as gains, which is normal.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 26, "Prospect theory", page 288 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“It took Francis Galton several years to figure out that correlation and regression are not two concepts – they are different perspectives on the same concept. The general rule is straightforward but has surprising consequences: whenever the correlation between two scores is imperfect, there will be regression to the mean.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 17, "Regression to the mean", page 181 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“It is the consistency of the information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 7, "A machine for jumping to conclusions", page 87 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“A rare event will be overweighted if it specifically attracts attention. […] And when there is no overweighting, there will be neglect.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 30, "Rare events", page 333 (ISBN 9780141033570).

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“There is no evidence that risk takers in the economic domain have an unusual appetite for gambles on high stakes; they are merely less aware of risks than more timid people are.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 24, "The engine of capitalism", page 263 (ISBN 9780141033570).