If you own a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.

- Steven Levitt

Purity is a good mask for corruption because it discourages inquiry.

- Steven Levitt

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

- Steven Levitt

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.

- Steven Levitt

An expert must be BOLD if he hopes to alchemize his homespun theory into conventional wisdom.

- Steven Levitt

The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

- Steven Levitt

Don't trust, just verify.

- Steven Levitt

No matter how expert you may be, well-designed checklists can improve outcomes.

- Steven Levitt

Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you’ve decided beforehand it can’t be done.

- Steven Levitt