Michael Lewis Quotes

By relying on the statistical information rather than a gut feeling, you allow the data to lead you to be in the right place at the right time. To remain as emotionally free from the hurly burley of the here and now is one of the only ways to succeed.

You have to be willing to have the decision-making follow the data.

I'm a bit of a freak for evidence-based analysis. I strongly believe in data.

Any time scientists disagree, it's because we have insufficient data. Then we can agree on what kind of data to get; we get the data; and the data solves the problem. Either I'm right, or you're right, or we're both wrong. And we move on. That kind of conflict resolution does not exist in politics or religion.

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.

Ideas are 10 a penny. It's the execution that's the hard thing to do. House is standing up against a tide of sentiment and emotionalism over reason that threatens to engulf this world. When you think about it, a rationalist, a man of science and reason, is in a pretty lonely position.

Avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience.

Here is an entirely banal idea that I think has the potential to change the world: Take evidence seriously. Taking evidence seriously does not mean privileging numbers over all other forms of knowledge - theories, narratives, images. Nor does it mean the kind of radical skepticism that questions everything to the point where no action is possible.

We have an expression in New York City government - "In God we trust, but for everyone else, bring data." It's so easy to pick up a sound byte and say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I believe that," without really thinking.

I tell people to start implementing when they are pretty sure there aren't more important stories out there. An iteration's worth of data is worth months of speculation.

To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.

I deal in facts, not forecasting the future. That's crystal ball stuff. That doesn't work.

You're neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You're right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right - that's the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don't have to worry about anybody else.

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa.

scientists ... resist ... making more of the data than the data make of themselves.

I believe science has a wonderful ability, in an unbiased way, to offer hope to many people who are confused, but it's not the only way to find hope.

I feel like the smartest people in my field are busy reinforcing the old models with new technology.

We don't read other people's opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think.

Good science is all about following the data as it shows up and letting yourself be proven wrong, and letting everything change while you're working on it - and I think writing is the same way.

Intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t understand — no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren’t able to convince them selves of it, they won’t accept it.

Eventually scientists will discover something that explains ghosts, just like they discovered electricity, which explained lightning, and it might be something about people's brains, or something about the earth's magnetic field, or it might be some new force altogether. And then ghosts won't be mysteries. They will be like electricity and rainbows and nonstick frying pans.

If you consider any set of data without a preconceived viewpoint, then a viewpoint will emerge from the data.

Certainly any president - Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative - should keep an open mind until they get the briefing.

I just happen to believe that people are not stupid.

The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity.