Quotes

“This sucker could go down.” – George W. Bush, 2008. Soothing people’s fears regarding the economic collapse.

“I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.” – Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“The ability to focus attention on important things is one of the defining characteristics of intelligence. Failure to focus attention on proper things is also one of the most characteristic of human judgment errors.” – Robert Shiller

“It is harder to be kind than clever.” – Jeff Bezos’ grandfather.

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” – John Maynard Keynes

“I don’t worry too much about pointing fingers at the past. I operate on the theory that every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.” – Warren Buffett, 2008

“The day is short, the task is vast, the workmen are sluggish, the reward is great, and the Employer is insistent.” – Rabbi Tarphon, Chapters of Our Fathers

“We will learn an enormous amount in a very short time, quite a bit in the medium term and absolutely nothing in the long term. That would be the historical precedent.” – Jeremy Grantham, Head of GMO, 70 years old, on the 2008 financial collapse.

“What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.” – Warren Buffett, on the same collapse.

““Your money can be inflated away. Your talent cannot.” – Buffett

“It’s amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if he’s paid a small fortune not to understand it.” – Upton Sinclair, paraphrased.

“Move the 8,000-pound gorilla out of the room and it’s a very nice room.” – Jim Sullivan, managing director of Green Street Advisors

“For 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education, and training. And on January 15th, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a sudden large withdrawal.” – Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the man who successfully landed a flight on the Hudson River after birds knocked out both engines. He saved all 155 lives onboard that day in January 2009.

“No one in the history of the world ever washed a rented car.” – Larry Summers

“As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken and written word.” – Peter Drucker

“”I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twayne

“At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.”

“Money is like salt water. The more you drink, the thirstier you get.”

“Gradually, and then suddenly.” – Ernest Hemingway, on how he went broke.

“Borrowing money is like wetting your bed in the middle of the night. At first all you feel is warmth and release. But very, very quickly comes the awful, cold discomfort of reality.” – Warren Buffett, on America’s debt culture

“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” – Unsure who said this originally.

“How many times do you have to be hit over the head until you figure out who’s hitting you?” – Harry Truman, campaigning against the Republican Congress in 1946.

“”The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

The first character of the Chinese spelling of crisis means danger, and the second means opportunity.

“Forecasts of the future tell you more about the forecast than the future.” – Warren Buffett

“There are no rewards for predicting rain; there are rewards for building arks.” — Lou Gerstner

“Whatever the conventional wisdom is, you should question it, because it’s probably wrong.” – Jim Rogers, George Soros’ partner

“I also have to say that until now, I never had a child. I used to feel sorry for people who had children. I was dead wrong. I was so, so wrong about that. This little girl is so much fun for me. I cannot get enough of her, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In fact, anybody reading this, if they haven’t done it, I’d encourage them to get home and get on with it.” – Jim Rogers

“Markets go up and down. So do toilet seats. Don’t get too excited.” – Me

“Always do your monetary worrying in inflation adjusted dollars.” – Me

Quotes on Innovation and Programming

“Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the people doing it.” – Chinese proverb

“The perfect race car falls apart as it crosses the finish line.” – Colin Chapman

“The next big thing is whatever made the last big thing more usable.” – Blake Ross, Firefox

“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“”I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.” – Steve Jobs

Quotes on War and Peace

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war … but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.” – Hermann Goering

“The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.” – Adolf Hitler

“The unwilling, led by the incompetent, to do the unnecessary, for the ungrateful” – Inscribed on a Vietnam-era coffin

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” – Dwight Eisenhower

“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.” – Ronald Reagan

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” – Benjamin Franklin

“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.” – Big Brother

“I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, and patience.” – Howard Zinn