Top 40 Richard H. Thaler Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “If you look at economics textbooks, you will learn that homo economicus can think like Albert Einstein, store as much memory as IBM’s Big Blue, and exercise the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi. Really. But the folks that we know are not like that. Real people have trouble with long division if they don’t have a calculator, sometimes forget their spouse’s birthday, and have a hangover on New Year’s Day. They are not homo economicus; they are homo sapiens.”

— Richard H. Thaler

2. “Psychologists tell us that in order to learn from experience, two ingredients are necessary: frequent practice and immediate feedback.”

— Richard H. Thaler

3. “2. We can’t do evidence-based policy without evidence.”

— Richard H. Thaler

4. “Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. There the authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a bit of a mess, but if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy are much increased.”

— Richard H. Thaler

5. “People think about life in terms of changes, not levels. They can be changes from the status quo or changes from what was expected, but whatever form they take, it is changes that make us happy or miserable.”

— Richard H. Thaler

6. “The ideal organizational environment encourages everyone to observe, collect data, and speak up.”

— Richard H. Thaler

7. “Giving up the opportunity to sell something does not hurt as much as taking the money out of your wallet to pay for it. Opportunity costs are vague and abstract when compared to handing over actual cash.”

— Richard H. Thaler

8. “The core premise of economic theory is that people choose by optimizing.”

— Richard H. Thaler

9. “The purely economic man is indeed close to being a social moron. Economic theory has been much preoccupied with this rational fool.”

— Richard H. Thaler

10. “First, never underestimate the power of inertia. Second, that power can be harnessed. If private companies or public officials think that one policy produces better outcomes, they can greatly influence the outcome by choosing it as the default.”

— Richard H. Thaler

11. “Just as no building lacks an architecture, so no choice lacks a context.”

— Richard H. Thaler

12. “The more choices you give people, the more help with decision making you need to provide.”

— Richard H. Thaler

13. “What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves.”

— Richard H. Thaler

14. “Unrealistic optimism is a pervasive feature of human life; it characterizes most people in most social categories. When they overestimate their personal immunity from harm, people may fail to take sensible preventive steps. If people are running risks because of unrealistic optimism, they might be able to benefit from a nudge. In fact, we have already mentioned one possibility: if people are reminded of a bad event, they may not continue to be so optimistic.”

— Richard H. Thaler

15. “A slightly longer answer is that people will need nudges for decisions that are difficult and rare, for which they do not get prompt feedback, and when they have trouble translating aspects of the situation into terms that they can easily understand. In.”

— Richard H. Thaler

16. “Overconfidence is a powerful force.”

— Richard H. Thaler

17. “The moral is that people are paying less attention to you than you believe.”

— Richard H. Thaler

18. “First, incentives are not properly aligned. If you engage in environmentally costly behavior next year, through your consumption choices, you will probably pay nothing for the environmental harms that you inflict.”

— Richard H. Thaler

19. “Because learning takes practice, we are more likely to get things right at small stakes than at large stakes. This means critics have to decide which argument they want to apply. If learning is crucial, then as the stakes go up, decision-making quality is likely to go down.”

— Richard H. Thaler

20. “Of course, coaches are Humans. They tend to do things the way they have always been done, because those decisions will not be second-guessed by the boss. As Keynes noted, following the conventional wisdom keeps you from getting fired.”

— Richard H. Thaler

21. “An especially good way to gain weight is to have dinner with other people. On average, those who eat with one other person eat about 35 percent more than they do when they are alone; members of a group of four eat about 75 percent more; those in groups of seven or more eat 96 percent more.”

— Richard H. Thaler

22. “So to put it simply, forcing people to choose is not always wise, and remaining neutral is not always possible.”

— Richard H. Thaler

23. “The nudge provided by asking people what they intend to do can be accentuated by asking them when and how they plan to do it. This.”

— Richard H. Thaler

24. “My only advice for reading the book is stop reading when it is no longer fun.”

— Richard H. Thaler

25. “Recall that the more insurance you buy, the more you pay, and the right to sue is a form of insurance.”

— Richard H. Thaler

26. “Roughly speaking, losses hurt about twice as much as gains make you feel good. This.”

— Richard H. Thaler

27. “Many people have made money selling magic potions and Ponzi schemes, but few have gotten rich selling the advice, “Don’t buy that stuff.”

— Richard H. Thaler

28. “This reflects a general tendency. People are more willing to lie by omission than commission. If I am selling you a used car, I do not feel obligated to mention that the car is burning a lot of oil, but if you ask me explicitly: “Does this car burn a lot of oil?” you are likely to wangle an admission from me that yes, there has been a small problem along those lines. To get at the truth, it helps to ask specific questions.”

— Richard H. Thaler

29. “You know, at some point people reach an age at which they can no longer be considered ‘promising.’ I think it is about the time they turn forty.”

— Richard H. Thaler

30. “It is time to stop making excuses. We need an enriched approach to doing economic research, one that acknowledges the existence and relevance of Humans.”

— Richard H. Thaler

31. “In complex situations, the Just Maximize Choices mantra is not enough to create good policy.”

— Richard H. Thaler

32. “We don’t have to stop inventing abstract models that describe the behavior of imaginary Econs. We do, however, have to stop assuming that those models are accurate descriptions of behavior, and stop basing policy decisions on such flawed analyses.”

— Richard H. Thaler

33. “They have convinced their customers that the entire shopping experience is an orgy of bargain hunting, and go out of their way to reinforce that image.”

— Richard H. Thaler

34. “One overly simplistic idea is that we can improve student performance by just by giving financial incentives to parents, teachers, or kids. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that such incentives are effective, but nuances matter.”

— Richard H. Thaler

35. “Markowitz’s strategy can be viewed as one example of what might be called the diversification heuristic. “When in doubt, diversify.”

— Richard H. Thaler

36. “Worldly wisdom teaches that is it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”

— Richard H. Thaler

37. “The evidence suggests that when people get a windfall – and this seems to be the way people think about their tax refund, despite it being expected – they tend to save a larger proportion from it than they do from regular income, especially if the windfall is sizable.”

— Richard H. Thaler

38. “Roughly speaking, losing something makes you twice as miserable as gaining the same thing makes you happy. In more technical language, people are “loss averse.”

— Richard H. Thaler

39. “Doctors are crucial choice architects, and with an understanding of how Humans think, they could do far more to improve people’s health and thus to lengthen their lives.”

— Richard H. Thaler

40. “The false assumption is that almost all people, almost all of the time, make choices that are in their best interest or at the very least are better than the choices that would be made by someone else.”

— Richard H. Thaler

41. “It turns out that if you ask people, the day before the election, whether they intend to vote, you can increase the probability of their voting by as much as 25 percent!”

— Richard H. Thaler

42. “What this means is that people do not assign specific values to objects. When they have to give something up, they are hurt more than they are pleased if they acquire the very same thing.”

— Richard H. Thaler

43. “Or consider this one: people’s judgments about strangers are affected by whether they are drinking iced coffee or hot coffee! Those given iced coffee are more likely to see other people as more selfish, less sociable, and, well, colder than those who are given hot coffee.27 This, too, happens quite unconsciously.”

— Richard H. Thaler

44. “That does not mean something is wrong with us as humans, but it does mean that our understanding of human behavior can be improved by appreciating how people systematically go wrong.”

— Richard H. Thaler

45. “Libertarian paternalism is a relatively weak, soft, and nonintrusive type of paternalism because choices are not blocked, fenced off, or significantly burdened. If people want to smoke cigarettes, to eat a lot of candy, to choose an unsuitable health care plan, or to fail to save for retirement, libertarian paternalists will not force them to do otherwise –.”

— Richard H. Thaler