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Rory Sutherland QUOTES

Rory Sutherland QUOTES

1 " Ever since, in the U.K. they banned smoking in public places, I've never enjoyed a drinks party ever again. And the reason, I only worked out just the other day, is when you go to a drinks party and you stand up and you hold a glass of red wine and you talk endlessly to people, you don't actually want to spend all the time talking. It's really, really tiring. Sometimes you just want to stand there silently, alone with your thoughts. Sometimes you just want to stand in the corner and stare out of the window. Now the problem is, when you can't smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you're a fucking philosopher. "

― Rory Sutherland

2 " All too often, what matters is not whether an idea is true or effective, but whether it fits with the preconceptions of a dominant cabal. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

3 " The number of people who think they understand statistics dangerously dwarfs those who actually do, and maths can cause fundamental problems when badly used. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

4 " No living creature can evolve and survive in the real world by processing information in an objective, measured and proportionate manner. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

5 " What is important is how you behave, not knowing why you do. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

6 " Evolved human instinct may be a much better at statistics than modern economists "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

7 " Not everything that makes sense works, and not everything that works makes sense. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

8 " People who are not skilled at mathematics tend to view the output of second-rate mathematicians with an high level of credulity, and attach almost mystical significance to their findings. Bad maths is the palmistry of the twenty-first century. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

9 " It is an enormous mistake to assume that what the translator conveys is what the speaker intended, and it is equally foolish to assume that what you intended to say is what will be understood. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

10 " Our conscious mind tries hard to preserve the illusion that it deliberately chose every action you have ever taken; in reality, in many of these decisions it was a bystander at best, and much of the time it did not even notice the decision being made. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

11 " A flower is a weed with an advertising budget. "

― Rory Sutherland

12 " the human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

13 " you are not thinking; you are merely being logical "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

14 " It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative. The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

15 " Irrational people are much more powerful than rational people, because their threats are so much more convincing. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

16 " the uber map is a psychological moonshot, because it does not reduce the waiting time for a taxi but simply makes waiting 90% less frustrating "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

17 " people don’t do what they say they believe, they do what’s convenient and then they repent, "

― Rory Sutherland , Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

18 " if you had retroactively applied the rules of scientific rationalism to all of the major scientific discoveries of the past 500 years you would have invalidated most of them. Perhaps most (penicillin, the X-Ray, the microwave, Aspirin, radio, Archimedes in the bath)  were the product of “inspired opportunism”. As he once put it: “a methodology was an ideology Galileo could not afford. "

― Rory Sutherland , Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

19 " Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. “Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000,” he replied. “And when he had that idea his feet were exactly where they are now. "

― Rory Sutherland , Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

20 " It’s important to remember that big data all comes from the same place – the past. A new campaigning style, a single rogue variable or a ‘black swan’ event can throw the most perfectly calibrated model into chaos. "

― Rory Sutherland , Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense