Tim Harford > Quotes

“Pluralism matters because life is not worth living without new experiences - new people, new places, new challenges. But discipline matters too; we cannot simply treat life as a psychedelic trip through a series of novel sensations.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“The Most successful industry of the last forty years has been built on failure after failure after failure.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“The evolutionary algorithm--of variation and selection, repeated--searches for solutions in a world where the problems keep changing, trying all sorts of variants and doing more of what works.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“Hours are long. Wages are pitiful. But sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause, of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means—hard as it is to believe—that whatever their alternatives are, they are worse. They stay there, too; turnover rates of multinational-owned factories are low, because conditions and pay, while bad, are better than those in factories run by local firms. And even a local company is likely to pay better than trying to earn money without a job: running an illegal street stall, working as a prostitute, or combing reeking landfills in cities like Manila to find recyclable goods.”
― Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist

“The more grotesque your boss's pay and the less he has do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work with the aim of being promoted to what he has.”
― Tim Harford, The Logic of Life

“Given the likely shape of these ever-shifting landscapes, the evolutionary mix of small steps and occasional wold gambles is the best possible way to search for solutions.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy. What matters is how quickly the leader is able to adapt.”
― Tim Harford, Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure