Leonard Mlodinow - People Quotes

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We afford automatic respect to superstar business moguls, politicians, and actors and to anyone flying around in a private jet, as if their accomplishments must reflect unique qualities not shared by those forced to eat commercial airline food. And we place too much confidence in the overly precise predictions of people - political pundits, financial experts, business consultants - who claim a track record demonstrating expertise.

Leonard Mlodinow
That's why successful people in every field are almost universally members of a certain set - the set of people who don't give up.

Leonard Mlodinow
Obviously it can be a mistake to assign brilliance in proportion to wealth. We cannot see a persons potential, only his or her results, so we often misjudge people by thinking that the results must reflect the person. The normal accident theory of life shows not that the connection between actions and rewards is random but that random influences are as important as our qualities and actions.

Leonard Mlodinow
Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal.

Leonard Mlodinow
The fact that human intuition is ill suited to situations involving uncertainty was known as early as the 1930's, when researchers noted that people could neither make up a sequence of numbers that passed mathematical tests for randomness nor recognize reliably whether a given string was randomly generated.

Leonard Mlodinow
We judge people and initiatives by their results, and we expect events to happen for good, understandable reason. But our clear visions of inevitability are often only illusions.

Leonard Mlodinow