Robert J. Shiller Quotes

Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist.

The great thing about behavioural psychology and economics is that they help us to see that there are actually pretty good reasons why human beings swing from greed to fear, and why we're not really calculating machines or utility-maximisers.

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Economic theory does not work with human beings. We are far too messy.

In considering economic behavior, humor is especially important for, needless to say, much of that behavior is infinitely ridiculous.

I've explained before the power psychology has on the markets.

No human is completely fearless.

Human beings are very complex creatures. This desire, this greed, this love is very complex.

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast.

We historians are increasingly using experimental psychology to understand the way we act. It is becoming very clear that our ability to evaluate risk is hedged by all sorts of cognitive biases. It's a miracle that we get anything right.

The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.

Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason. Events which excite those feelings will produce wonderful effects.

There is much evidence that people are not rational, in the economist’s sense; nor do they take into account expectation, in the precise interpretation of that word. As a result, economic theory often does not correspond with what happens in the market. Some would argue that we need descriptive economics. I would argue that all should be taught about probability, utility, and MEU (maximization of expected utility) and act accordingly.

We do not always act the way economists think we should, mainly because we're both less selfish and less rational than economists think we are. Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it.

…in a crisis of confidence and credit, psychology is the big factor.

Looking at the stock market to understand the economy is like studying a manic depressive in order to understand human nature.

The sad truth is that many behavioral economists know very little about psychology.

Humans are hard-wired to be irrational when it comes to financial decisions. We must understand that so we don't become the sucker at the poker table.

Human behavior is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.

There appears to be but two grand master passions or movers in the human mind, namely, love and pride. And what constitutes the beauty or deformity of a man's character is the choice he makes under which banner he determines to enlist himself. But there is a strong distinction between different degress in the same thing and a mixture of two contraries.

Need drives men to envy as fullness drives them to selfishness.

Superstition is a part of the very being of humanity; and when we fancy that we are banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself at all safe.

There is no accounting for human beings.