If something is going on, I hear about it. I like to talk to people, I socialise. Television is a waste of time. Human contact is what matters.
The classical man’s worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man’s worst fear is just death.
A system, artificially stabilized, and of course you have hidden risks under the surface, and you don’t know where the risks are.
When I trade, I don’t have an agency problem; I have my neck on the line. When a bank or banker trades, it’s not his neck on the line.
Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.
Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.
This is the tragedy of modernity: as with neurotically overprotective parents, those trying to help are often hurting us the most.
A verbal threat is the most authentic certificate of impotence.
An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.
Procrastination is the soul rebelling against entrapment.
Character is proportionate to N, the number of consecutive failures without being discouraged, or equivalently, the number of successive rejections without being intimidated.
Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have – or don’t have – in their portfolio.
Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.
You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.
An erudite is someone who displays less than he knows; a journalist or consultant the opposite.
At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control.
In the United States large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation’s funeral at our expense.
I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.