From Long or Short Capital:
Eat what the monkey eats, then eat the monkey.
-- U.S. Navy survival guidance
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
-- T.E. Lawrence
Life is tough ... It's even tougher if you're stupid.
-- John Wayne
We refused to touch credit default swaps. It would be like buying insurance on the Titanic from someone on the Titanic.
-- Nassim Taleb
Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.
-- Calvin Coolidge
If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
-- Abraham Lincoln
The stock market responded badly to Geithner because it is crying out for someone in authority who can make bold moves and justify them, someone non-mealy-mouthed, someone who has an equal mix of brains, principles and confidence. The market wants Churchill and they keep tossing it Chamberlains.
-- Emanuel Derman
Anyone who expects markets to restore a disturbed equilibrium instantaneously will be disappointed. People cannot discover the relevant changes, confirm and assess them, consider alternative arrangements of their affairs, and carry out those changes in an instant. The competent economist appreciates the necessity of patience in evaluating the market's operation. Simply because the market does not appear to have reconfigured itself fully soon after a shock, we have no warrant to conclude that "the market doesn’t work anymore" or that "the market doesn’t work the way it used to."
-- Robert Higgs (src)
Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over.
-- Charles Ponzi, on his scam over the people in Boston
[W]e do know something – at least abstractly – about the future. We know that other great crises will come. Whether they will be occasioned by foreign wars, economic collapse, or rampant terrorism, no one can predict with assurances. Yet in one form of another, great crises will surely come again... When they do, governments almost certainly will gain new powers over economic and social affairs… For those who cherish individual liberty and a free society, the prospect is deeply disheartening.
-- Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
-- Michael Crichton on Global Warming
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
-- James Collins outlining the "Stockdale Paradox"
In Three Days of the Condor, when professional killer G. Joubert is asked why he kills people for a living: "I don’t interest myself in 'why'. I think more often in terms of 'when', sometimes 'where'; always 'how much'."
Freedom is the last, best hope on earth.
-- Abraham Lincoln
What each man does will shape his trial and fortune.
For Jupiter is king to all alike;
the fates will find their way.
-- The Aeneid
Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.
-- Polybius
Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
-- Jeremy Bentham
Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
-- Nassim Taleb
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
-- Vladimir Lenin
You know, the usual: supreme power, undue influence over others, world domination.
-- David Harding of Winton Capital Management when asked about what drives him in Traderdaily
Anytime is the best time to buy.
-- Kieran Quinn, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association
A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.
-- Lester Freamon on The Wire
But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can’t buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you.
-- Herman Blume in Rushmore
Economics ... has not truly come to grips with the main difficulty, which is the inordinate importance of a few extreme events.
-- Benoit Mandelbrot
All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
-- Blaise Pascal
Host: why does Ambac still have AAA rating?
Cramer: BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS TOO PAINFUL.
-- Jim Cramer (src)
Experienced happiness, we learned, depends mainly on personality and on the hedonic value of the activities to which people allocate their time. Life circumstances influence the allocation of time, and the hedonic outcome is often mixed: high-income women have more enjoyable activities than the poor, but they also spend more time engaged in work that they do not enjoy; married women spend less time alone, but more time doing tedious chores. Conditions that make people satisfied with their life do not necessarily make them happy.
-- Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics Recipient
I'll begin with a brief note about the stock market here. Suppose you're considering riding a unicycle on a high-wire that by most evidence is not secure, but it's possible that the wire might hold up for a while. If you keep riding, people will throw small bills at you until the moment the wire breaks. Once the wire breaks, you will be injured and will probably lose whatever you gained initially. Would you keep riding?
-- John Hussman, Portfolio Manager of Hussman Funds in his Weekly Comment (src)
This corporation has a strict bros before hoes policy.
-- Jack Donaghy
I like a woman with ambition; it's like seeing a dog wearing clothes.
-- Jack Donaghy
I find it extraordinary that if you have two derivative dealers — Dealer A and Dealer B — and both write a ticket, Dealer A records a profit and Dealer B records a profit, particularly if it's a 20-year contract. That is the kind of world I'd love to live in, but I haven't found it yet.
-- Warren Buffett
This guy came in, and I asked what he liked to do for fun. He said, "I really enjoy playing hoops." I said, "We can't hire the guy. Everyone I knew in college who liked to play hoops was an idiot."
-- Max Levchin, co-founder of Paypal
Do you see this? This is the Book of the Dead. All of you are going to be in this book someday, have you thought about that? You're going to die and all that's left is your name in this book. So what do you want to do between now and then?
-- A Catholic pastor
I've always felt that macroeconomics was not economics the way astrology is not astronomy.
-- M. Hodak
Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?
-- Bob Dylan, on how he chose his career
The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.
-- Alan Greenspan
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
-- Scott Adams
If you hold back anything, I'll kill ya. If you bend the truth, or I think you’re bending the truth, I'll kill ya. If you forget anything, I'll kill ya. In fact, you’re gonna have to work very hard to stay alive Nick. Now, do you understand everything I've just said? 'Cause if you don't, I'll kill ya!
-- Rory Breaker in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
In terms of understanding corporate finance, economists have it all wrong when they say "there is no free lunch." Rather, the more appropriate comment ought to be "somebody has to pay for lunch – and it isn’t going to be me."
-- Martin Whitman
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
-- Heisenberg
Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
-- Ray Kroc
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
-- George Santayana
Why would the majority favor policies that hurt the majority? … The majority favors these policies because the average person underestimates the social benefits of the free market, especially for international and labor markets. In a phrase, the public suffers from anti-market bias.
-- Bryan Caplan, GMU Economics Professor
I cannot give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.
-- Herbert B. Swope
Norville: What do you do if the envelope is too big for the slot?
Ancient Mail Sorter: Well, if you fold 'em, they fire you. I usually throw 'em out.
-- An exchange from The Hudsucker Proxy
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
-- William Butler Yeats
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.
-- Leon Trotsky
There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know that they don't know. Then again, there is a third type of investor — the investment professional, who indeed knows that he or she doesn't know, but whose livelihood depends upon appearing to know.
-- William Bernstein
The world is full of smart-alecs who don't understand anything.
-- Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in theoretical physics
You must have long range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short range failures
-- Charles C. Noble
Wisdom comes from suffering and error and when the passions die down and the observations begin.
-- David Brooks in a March 8th, 2007 Op-Ed
Casual commitments invite casual reversal, exposing portfolio managers to the damaging whipsaw of buying high and selling low. Only with the confidence created by a strong decision-making process can investors sell speculative excess and buy despair-driven value.
-- David Swensen
Many traders aim to get out of harm's way by avoiding exposure to rare events – a mostly defensive approach. I am far more aggressive than those traders and go one step further; I have organized my career and business in such a way as to be able to benefit from them.
-- Nassim Taleb
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Amaranth once sent chess sets as year-end gifts, inscribed with a quotation from the late grandmaster Alexander Kotov: "It often happens that a player carries out a deep and complicated calculation, but fails to spot something elementary right at the first move."
The great mass of people form their political beliefs with little regard for facts or logic. However, the elites also have a strategy for avoiding truth. Elites form their political beliefs dogmatically, using their cleverness to organize facts to fit preconceived prejudices. The masses' strategy for avoiding truth is to make a low investment in understanding; the elites' strategy is to make a large investment in selectively choosing which facts and arguments to emphasize or ignore.
-- Arnold Kling, Two Strategies for Avoiding Truth (src)
[The investors] said to me, "Well, how can you continue, can you... do you have the strength, or the will, or the enthusiasm, or so...?" And I said, "How can you ask me this question? ... If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project."
-- filmmaker Werner Herzog on why he finished Fitzcarraldo after harrowing setbacks (src)
It is not history, facts, or intelligence that guide most investors through the final phases of a bull market; it is hopes and wishes.
-- Richard Russell
There are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the foremost are: (1) speculating when you think you are investing; (2) speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and (3) risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose.
-- Benjamin Graham
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong — but that's the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40% of our national income.
-- Milton Friedman
People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.
-- Thomas Sowell
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
What happened to [the Amaranth hedge fund] shows that when you're really right, you always overstay the position and that's when you get murdered. It's better not to be right so much.
-- Peter Bernstein
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
Some people will happily jump on the next big thing, give it all they've got, and in this way make important contributions to fast-moving fields. Others just don't have the temperament to do this. Some people need to think through everything very carefully, and this takes time, as they get easily confused. It's not hard to feel superior to such people, until you remember that Einstein was one of them. In my experience, the truly shocking new ideas and innovations tend to come from such people.
-- Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
-- Mike Shea
The behavior of termites, together with ants and bees, is a precursor to trust because they have an extraordinary ability to form relationships and sophisticated social structures based on mutual altruism even though individually they are fundamentally dumb. Money itself is a derivative of trust. If we can figure out how termites come together, then we may be able to better understand the underlying principles of market behavior — and make big money.
-- Jeffrey Epstein, money manager/alleged sex criminal
During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is: not to take the risk. When once the risk has really been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice how he acts when he loses money.
-- New England Proverb
To me it boils down to this: The best employees at Yahoo, eBay, Google, and other major content providers are engineers. The best employees at Comcast, Cox, SBC and other access providers are lobbyists. For both of these types of companies, everyone else they hire is just good enough to support and monetize the work of their best employees.
-- Derek Scruggs
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
-- Milton Friedman
The upshot is that the points where defensive or aggressive investment positions are most effective are also typically the points where one will, at least briefly, look like an idiot for taking them.
-- John P. Hussman, Hostile Trends
Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.
-- Leo Tolstoy
That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
-- Cicero
There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
-- Leon Trotsky
The Greatest Happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.
-- Genghis Khan
No matter how good our kung-fu is, it will never defeat guns.
-- Iron Robe Yim
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-- George Washington
Eat what the monkey eats, then eat the monkey.
-- U.S. Navy survival guidance
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
-- T.E. Lawrence
Life is tough ... It's even tougher if you're stupid.
-- John Wayne
We refused to touch credit default swaps. It would be like buying insurance on the Titanic from someone on the Titanic.
-- Nassim Taleb
Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance.
-- Calvin Coolidge
If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
-- Abraham Lincoln
The stock market responded badly to Geithner because it is crying out for someone in authority who can make bold moves and justify them, someone non-mealy-mouthed, someone who has an equal mix of brains, principles and confidence. The market wants Churchill and they keep tossing it Chamberlains.
-- Emanuel Derman
Anyone who expects markets to restore a disturbed equilibrium instantaneously will be disappointed. People cannot discover the relevant changes, confirm and assess them, consider alternative arrangements of their affairs, and carry out those changes in an instant. The competent economist appreciates the necessity of patience in evaluating the market's operation. Simply because the market does not appear to have reconfigured itself fully soon after a shock, we have no warrant to conclude that "the market doesn’t work anymore" or that "the market doesn’t work the way it used to."
-- Robert Higgs (src)
Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over.
-- Charles Ponzi, on his scam over the people in Boston
[W]e do know something – at least abstractly – about the future. We know that other great crises will come. Whether they will be occasioned by foreign wars, economic collapse, or rampant terrorism, no one can predict with assurances. Yet in one form of another, great crises will surely come again... When they do, governments almost certainly will gain new powers over economic and social affairs… For those who cherish individual liberty and a free society, the prospect is deeply disheartening.
-- Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
-- Michael Crichton on Global Warming
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
-- James Collins outlining the "Stockdale Paradox"
In Three Days of the Condor, when professional killer G. Joubert is asked why he kills people for a living: "I don’t interest myself in 'why'. I think more often in terms of 'when', sometimes 'where'; always 'how much'."
Freedom is the last, best hope on earth.
-- Abraham Lincoln
What each man does will shape his trial and fortune.
For Jupiter is king to all alike;
the fates will find their way.
-- The Aeneid
Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.
-- Polybius
Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
-- Jeremy Bentham
Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
-- Nassim Taleb
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
-- Vladimir Lenin
You know, the usual: supreme power, undue influence over others, world domination.
-- David Harding of Winton Capital Management when asked about what drives him in Traderdaily
Anytime is the best time to buy.
-- Kieran Quinn, chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association
A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.
-- Lester Freamon on The Wire
But here's my advice to the rest of you: Take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs and take them down. Just remember, they can buy anything but they can’t buy backbone. Don't let them forget it. Thank you.
-- Herman Blume in Rushmore
Economics ... has not truly come to grips with the main difficulty, which is the inordinate importance of a few extreme events.
-- Benoit Mandelbrot
All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.
-- Blaise Pascal
Host: why does Ambac still have AAA rating?
Cramer: BECAUSE THE TRUTH IS TOO PAINFUL.
-- Jim Cramer (src)
Experienced happiness, we learned, depends mainly on personality and on the hedonic value of the activities to which people allocate their time. Life circumstances influence the allocation of time, and the hedonic outcome is often mixed: high-income women have more enjoyable activities than the poor, but they also spend more time engaged in work that they do not enjoy; married women spend less time alone, but more time doing tedious chores. Conditions that make people satisfied with their life do not necessarily make them happy.
-- Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics Recipient
I'll begin with a brief note about the stock market here. Suppose you're considering riding a unicycle on a high-wire that by most evidence is not secure, but it's possible that the wire might hold up for a while. If you keep riding, people will throw small bills at you until the moment the wire breaks. Once the wire breaks, you will be injured and will probably lose whatever you gained initially. Would you keep riding?
-- John Hussman, Portfolio Manager of Hussman Funds in his Weekly Comment (src)
This corporation has a strict bros before hoes policy.
-- Jack Donaghy
I like a woman with ambition; it's like seeing a dog wearing clothes.
-- Jack Donaghy
I find it extraordinary that if you have two derivative dealers — Dealer A and Dealer B — and both write a ticket, Dealer A records a profit and Dealer B records a profit, particularly if it's a 20-year contract. That is the kind of world I'd love to live in, but I haven't found it yet.
-- Warren Buffett
This guy came in, and I asked what he liked to do for fun. He said, "I really enjoy playing hoops." I said, "We can't hire the guy. Everyone I knew in college who liked to play hoops was an idiot."
-- Max Levchin, co-founder of Paypal
Do you see this? This is the Book of the Dead. All of you are going to be in this book someday, have you thought about that? You're going to die and all that's left is your name in this book. So what do you want to do between now and then?
-- A Catholic pastor
I've always felt that macroeconomics was not economics the way astrology is not astronomy.
-- M. Hodak
Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a 13-year-old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this 13-year-old girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy — he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish. I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?
-- Bob Dylan, on how he chose his career
The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.
-- Alan Greenspan
If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
-- Scott Adams
If you hold back anything, I'll kill ya. If you bend the truth, or I think you’re bending the truth, I'll kill ya. If you forget anything, I'll kill ya. In fact, you’re gonna have to work very hard to stay alive Nick. Now, do you understand everything I've just said? 'Cause if you don't, I'll kill ya!
-- Rory Breaker in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
In terms of understanding corporate finance, economists have it all wrong when they say "there is no free lunch." Rather, the more appropriate comment ought to be "somebody has to pay for lunch – and it isn’t going to be me."
-- Martin Whitman
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
-- Heisenberg
Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
-- Ray Kroc
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
-- George Santayana
Why would the majority favor policies that hurt the majority? … The majority favors these policies because the average person underestimates the social benefits of the free market, especially for international and labor markets. In a phrase, the public suffers from anti-market bias.
-- Bryan Caplan, GMU Economics Professor
I cannot give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.
-- Herbert B. Swope
Norville: What do you do if the envelope is too big for the slot?
Ancient Mail Sorter: Well, if you fold 'em, they fire you. I usually throw 'em out.
-- An exchange from The Hudsucker Proxy
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
-- William Butler Yeats
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.
-- Leon Trotsky
There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know that they don't know. Then again, there is a third type of investor — the investment professional, who indeed knows that he or she doesn't know, but whose livelihood depends upon appearing to know.
-- William Bernstein
The world is full of smart-alecs who don't understand anything.
-- Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in theoretical physics
You must have long range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short range failures
-- Charles C. Noble
Wisdom comes from suffering and error and when the passions die down and the observations begin.
-- David Brooks in a March 8th, 2007 Op-Ed
Casual commitments invite casual reversal, exposing portfolio managers to the damaging whipsaw of buying high and selling low. Only with the confidence created by a strong decision-making process can investors sell speculative excess and buy despair-driven value.
-- David Swensen
Many traders aim to get out of harm's way by avoiding exposure to rare events – a mostly defensive approach. I am far more aggressive than those traders and go one step further; I have organized my career and business in such a way as to be able to benefit from them.
-- Nassim Taleb
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Amaranth once sent chess sets as year-end gifts, inscribed with a quotation from the late grandmaster Alexander Kotov: "It often happens that a player carries out a deep and complicated calculation, but fails to spot something elementary right at the first move."
The great mass of people form their political beliefs with little regard for facts or logic. However, the elites also have a strategy for avoiding truth. Elites form their political beliefs dogmatically, using their cleverness to organize facts to fit preconceived prejudices. The masses' strategy for avoiding truth is to make a low investment in understanding; the elites' strategy is to make a large investment in selectively choosing which facts and arguments to emphasize or ignore.
-- Arnold Kling, Two Strategies for Avoiding Truth (src)
[The investors] said to me, "Well, how can you continue, can you... do you have the strength, or the will, or the enthusiasm, or so...?" And I said, "How can you ask me this question? ... If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project."
-- filmmaker Werner Herzog on why he finished Fitzcarraldo after harrowing setbacks (src)
It is not history, facts, or intelligence that guide most investors through the final phases of a bull market; it is hopes and wishes.
-- Richard Russell
There are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the foremost are: (1) speculating when you think you are investing; (2) speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and (3) risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose.
-- Benjamin Graham
The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong — but that's the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40% of our national income.
-- Milton Friedman
People who decry the fact that businesses are in business "just to make money" seldom understand the implications of what they are saying. You make money by doing what other people want, not what you want.
-- Thomas Sowell
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
What happened to [the Amaranth hedge fund] shows that when you're really right, you always overstay the position and that's when you get murdered. It's better not to be right so much.
-- Peter Bernstein
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
Some people will happily jump on the next big thing, give it all they've got, and in this way make important contributions to fast-moving fields. Others just don't have the temperament to do this. Some people need to think through everything very carefully, and this takes time, as they get easily confused. It's not hard to feel superior to such people, until you remember that Einstein was one of them. In my experience, the truly shocking new ideas and innovations tend to come from such people.
-- Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
-- Mike Shea
The behavior of termites, together with ants and bees, is a precursor to trust because they have an extraordinary ability to form relationships and sophisticated social structures based on mutual altruism even though individually they are fundamentally dumb. Money itself is a derivative of trust. If we can figure out how termites come together, then we may be able to better understand the underlying principles of market behavior — and make big money.
-- Jeffrey Epstein, money manager/alleged sex criminal
During the first period of a man's life the greatest danger is: not to take the risk. When once the risk has really been taken, then the greatest danger is to risk too much.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice how he acts when he loses money.
-- New England Proverb
To me it boils down to this: The best employees at Yahoo, eBay, Google, and other major content providers are engineers. The best employees at Comcast, Cox, SBC and other access providers are lobbyists. For both of these types of companies, everyone else they hire is just good enough to support and monetize the work of their best employees.
-- Derek Scruggs
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
-- Milton Friedman
The upshot is that the points where defensive or aggressive investment positions are most effective are also typically the points where one will, at least briefly, look like an idiot for taking them.
-- John P. Hussman, Hostile Trends
Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.
-- Leo Tolstoy
That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Advice is judged by results, not by intentions.
-- Cicero
There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
-- Leon Trotsky
The Greatest Happiness is to scatter your enemy and drive him before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded and in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters.
-- Genghis Khan
No matter how good our kung-fu is, it will never defeat guns.
-- Iron Robe Yim
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-- George Washington