We're surrounded by big problems and people who have been attacking the same big problems for years and years and years and years, and often they're not getting anywhere. Stephen J. Dubner More Quotes by Stephen J. Dubner More Quotes From Stephen J. Dubner The movement toward choosing religion, rampant as it is, shouldn't be surprising. Ours is an era marked by the desire to define - or redefine - ourselves. Stephen J. Dubner ourselves movement desire religion Like the graduates of some notorious boot camp, my brothers and sisters and I look back with a sort of perverse glee at the rigors of our Catholicism. My oldest sister, Mary, was so convinced of the church's omnipotence that when she walked into a Protestant church with some high-school friends, she was sure its walls would crash down on her head. Stephen J. Dubner look friends sister church The data are what matter in economics, and the more ruthlessness that an economist can summon to make sense of the data, the more useful his findings will be. Stephen J. Dubner will economics data matter The things you think that really change your life a lot, don't. Stephen J. Dubner think you change life I believe that people generally want to be what we call good. They want to cooperate with people. They don't want to steal; they don't want to cheat. But everybody has a price. Everybody has an incentive. Stephen J. Dubner good want believe people One of the strangest unintended consequences of abortion, of legalized abortion, was that it drives the crime rate down because what abortion really was, was a mechanism for which fewer unwanted children could be born. Stephen J. Dubner down abortion born children People are being incentivized for the wrong things. We've heard about a lot - doctors for procedures rather than creating wellness or maintaining wellness. Stephen J. Dubner wrong things wellness people