The Folly of Fools Quotes

“The great sage Thales once put the general matter succinctly "Oh master," he was asked, "what is the most difficult thing to do?" "To know thyself", he replied. "And the easiest?" "To give advice to others.”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“A very disturbing feature of overconfidence is that it often appears to be poorly associated with knowledge—that is, the more ignorant the individual, the more confident he or she maybe.”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“However much we champion freedom of thought, we actually spend much of our time censoring input. We seek out publications that mirror or support our prior views and largely avoid those that don't.”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“Revolutionary moments often seem to occur in history when large numbers of individuals have a change in consciousness, regarding themselves and their status”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“A very disturbing feature of overconfidence is that it often appears to be poorly associated with knowledge - that is, the more ignorant the individual, the more confident he or she might be.”
― Robert Trivers, Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself the Better to Fool Others

“I know nothing about economics and—from evolutionary logic—could not have predicted a thing about the collapse of 2008, but I have disagreed for thirty years with an alleged science called economics that has resolutely failed to ground itself in underlying knowledge, at a cost to all of us”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life

“Denial is apt to be quicker than the truth, and so are well-rehearsed lies.”
― Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life