I have always believed that ...

I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success: I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers.
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 Daniel Kahneman

Quotes from the same author

The illusion of skill is not only an individual aberration; it is deeply ingrained in the culture of the [investment management] industry.
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 Daniel Kahneman
We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences. Even when we think about the future, we don’t think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories.
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 Daniel Kahneman
Below an income of ... $60,000 a year, people are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line. ... Money does not buy you experiential happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery.
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 Daniel Kahneman
Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.
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 Daniel Kahneman
The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.
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 Daniel Kahneman