Steven Levitt Quotations

As I see it, most major philanthropists have been bullied into giving. They feel social pressure to give. It has become a cost of doing business.

People don't like it, but inevitably we need to think about both the costs and the benefits of health care. We cannot avoid the financial consequences.

Wall Street is populated by a bunch of people whose primary goal is to make money, and the rules are pretty much caveat emptor.

Good social media is authentic. What makes social media work is actually having something to say.

The most obvious things are often right there, but you don't think about them because you've narrowed your vision.

If you really accept that global warming puts the world at risk, then you think you would be open to any solution that could undo it.

You'd be a fool or a deluded idealist to think ethics would be prominent on Wall Street. That is not a statement against people in the money business, just a fact.

I think the problem with schools is not too many incentives but too few. Because of tenure, teachers' unions, and the fact that teachers generally aren't observed in their classrooms, they can do whatever they want in class.

The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.

After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy.