Gigerenzer Quotes & Sayings

The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Fortunate are the nations that can build wooden houses. Because wood breathes, transforms, deteriorates, like us. It is also important to have flowers and plants where we live, because they breathe, too. Contemplating a flower for three seconds can be a captivating solitary journey back to original geometry, which is always revitalizing. — Henryk Skolimowski

Someday we'll be more then words in the dark — Sara Raasch

When you have a number of disagreeable duties to perform, always do the most disagreeable first. — Josiah Quincy

Great thinkers often learn, to their surprise, that new ideas are less than welcome. — Gerd Gigerenzer

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. — John Quincy Adams

-Why does a man live?
-In order to think about it... — Erich Maria Remarque

If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy. — Jamie Zawinski

. . . my father had been brutal on me, but with him out of my life I had in turn become tough on myself. I knew enough about the game to be a pro but had never learned to have fun at it. — Patrick O'Sullivan

We have to learn to live with uncertainty. — Gerd Gigerenzer

What happened to me in the Sixties was so major and so worldwide and so huge, there's no way I can repeat it. But in a way, I had nothing to do with it, it just took me over. It was bizarre, it was weird, and I had no control over it. I don't think anyone could have planned what happened to me. — Twiggy

I focus on the most important form of innumeracy in everyday life, statistical innumeracy
that is, the inability to reason about uncertainties and risk. — Gerd Gigerenzer

An intuition is neither caprice nor a sixth sense but a form of unconscious intelligence. — Gerd Gigerenzer

I've got about ten things to say to you right now. But at least nine of them would make me sound like a psycho."
In spite of the seriousness of the situation, I nearly smiled. "What's the tenth thing?" I asked his shirtfront.
He paused, considering it. "Never mind," he grumbled. "That one would make me sound like a psycho, too. — Lisa Kleypas

A thought no less than a thing, an idea equally with an empire, is resolved into a complex of infinitely extensive relations between infinitesimally small parts. — Sangharakshita

a world of known risk, in short, risk (Figure 2-3, center). I use this term for a world where all alternatives, consequences, and probabilities are known. Lotteries and games of chance are examples. Most of the time, however, we live in a changing world where some of these are unknown: where we face unknown risks, or uncertainty (Figure 2-3, right). The world of uncertainty is huge compared to that of risk. Whom to marry? Whom to trust? What to do with the rest of one's life? In an uncertain world, it is impossible to determine the optimal course of action by calculating the exact risks. We have to deal with "unknown unknowns." Surprises happen. Even when calculation does not provide a clear answer, however, we have to make decisions. — Gerd Gigerenzer

Cognition requires going beyond the information given, to make bets and therefore to risk errors. — Gerd Gigerenzer