Richard Thaler Quotes

I realized that you could formulate theories about human and social phenomena in language and pictures and whatever you wanted on the computer, and you didn't have to go through this straitjacket, adding a lot of numbers.

A painstaking course in qualitative and quantitative analysis by John Wing gave me an appreciation of the need for, and beauty of, accurate measurement.

To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.

I think that it's more important for an economist to be wise and sophisticated in scientific method than it is for a physicist because with controlled laboratory experiments possible, they practically guide you; you couldn't go astray. Whereas in economics, by dogma and misunderstanding, you can go very sadly astray.

You know economists; they're the sort of people who see something works in practice and wonder if it would work in theory.

But part of the job of economics is weeding out errors. That is much harder than making them, but also more fun.

An early fascination with higher mathematics at the university level blossomed into speculative thinking that could provide a basis for dealing with economic issues.

The goal is to provide analytical tools that will last students a lifetime.

The whole intention of empirical economics is to force theory down to Earth.

A healthy economics has got to have both conceptual, theoretical research and applied, empirical research.

I'm a Ph.D. in economics, and so you analyze every situation uniquely because every international situation is unique.

I am one of the most successful economists, according to what markets tell us, though most of my professional colleagues, who are much keener to accept market outcomes than I am, would dismiss me as a crank or - the worst of all abuses among economists - a 'sociologist.'

I never worked a job that required research. I'm not really good at it, to be honest.

We should teach the students, as well as executives, how to conduct experiments, how to examine data, and how to use these tools to make better decisions.

I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as, roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything.

Every problem can be solved as long as they use common sense and apply the right research and techniques.

Successful ecologists are successful in part because they have prepared their minds to attack scientific problems using a variety of intellectual tools.

It is the mark of a greatly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics.

The primary role of the economist is to find out the truth about the real world.

You must acquire something of that industrious habit of mind which the study of natural science gives,—the art of comparing, of perceiving true likenesses and true differences, and so of classifying and arranging what you see; the art of connecting facts together in your mind in cause and effect

The study of economics has been again and again led astray by the vain idea that economics must proceed according to the pattern of other sciences.

There is no such thing as quantitative economics.

We have professional economists who can defend any viewpoint with statistics and they do that everywhere in the world.

In the 1940s, economics started getting highly mathematical. It was basically because economists weren't smart enough to write down models of real behavior that they started writing down models of highly rational behavior - and they kind of forgot about humans.

Some people are great at the pure mathematical things - like Bill Gates, he's great at math things. He loves to do puzzles. Me, I like to look at an overall landscape and try to figure out, how do you solve a problem?