Cass Sunstein Quotes

One cannot always be right in our complex world; no dishonor attends an incorrect choice among plausible outcomes drawn from a properly constructed argument.

I have to take decisions—not back hunches.

You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.

I've done enough of this that I can tell early on if it's going in the wrong direction or not.

Making decisions quickly isn't for everyone, and I've had my disasters, but overall, it works for me.

It is much easier to make the speeches than to finally make the judgments.

If we have as a clear certainty with which to plan, total uncertainty, then that would be helpful.

The statesman must weigh the rewards of success against the penalties of failure. And he is permitted only one guess.

Good policy analysis recognizes that physical truth may be poorly or incompletely known. Its objective is to evaluate, order, and structure incomplete knowledge so as to allow decisions to be made with as complete an understanding as possible of the current state of knowledge, its limitations, and its implications.

The great problem now is that we don’t know what to do.

As an intelligence analyst you have to tell the president what you know, what you think you know and what you don’t know.

Gut feeling is all about the experiences that you have had in your life. It is about being in difficult scenarios, knowing what worked, what did not work, and then taking a decision.

It's very personal to me and doesn't work for everybody, but what I have found in my experience is that when I make pro and con lists, it's usually because I am trying to talk myself out of a good idea or talk myself into a really bad one.

People who are great at making decisions in the face of uncertainty have great judgment.

Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information.

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

I've always made my decisions based on two factors: intellectual analysis and my gut. And when they meet, that's a go from me. That's when I see the goal.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Judgment is more than skill. It sets forth on intellectual seas beyond the shores of hard indisputable factual information.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

I fear we might be losing the basic human facility to be alone - and with that you throw out independent decision-making, what to trust, what not to trust; key stuff - a perilous loss.

Perspective gives us the ability to accurately contrast the large with the small, and the important with the less important. Without it we are lost in a world where all ideas, news, and information look the same. We cannot differentiate, we cannot prioritize, and we cannot make good choices.

Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe that it's enough.