Henry Clay Quotes

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

The data are what matter in economics, and the more ruthlessness that an economist can summon to make sense of the data, the more useful his findings will be.

When we make decisions based on factors other than the available empirical evidence, we are less than objective, which means we are no longer acting as scientists.

Statistics are easy to remove ourselves from. A story, you are implicated in, and you have to choose what side you are going to be on.

Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.

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

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.

All models have faults - that doesn't mean you can't use them as tools for making decisions.

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

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

I am incredibly bad at predicting the future; I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies.

Give your decisions, never your reasons; your decisions may be right, your reasons are sure to be wrong.

You believe in God or statistics or the way your narrative differs from other people.

We need to be able to make decisions even though part of the information that we have is incorrect and wrong.

Statistics is the plural of anecdote.

I have to take decisions—not back hunches.

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

In many important contexts, especially those that are complex, new, or unfamiliar, you shouldn’t blink… and you really shouldn’t trust your gut.

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.

I'm always trying to calculate the mathematical probability of certain outcomes.

When it comes to assessing the chances of some complicated combination of events, gut feelings are pretty much useless.

You need the right balance between data and gut feeling.

When it comes to making decisions, I'm not what you'd call a numbers guy.