What I learned on my own I still remember

Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don’t confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever.

People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, ‘Oh, its temporary.’ It lasted 17 years!...

The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of...

true humility is when you can surprise yourself more than others; the rest is either shyness or good marketing

In social policy, when we provide a safety net, it should be designed to help people take more entrepreneurial risks, not to turn them into dependents. This doesn’t mean that we should be callous to...

Capitalism is about adventurers who get harmed by their mistakes, not people who harm others with their mistakes.

The classical man’s worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man’s worst fear is just death

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears

Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.

Paul Krugman is a danger to society!

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination

Globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China.

I select a very small number of things to be sceptical about, such as markets, and on these I am hypersceptic. But I want to be fooled by randomness in art. I want the ceremonial...

Bailing out every bank that fails makes the system riskier, not safer.

English does not distinguish between arrogant-up (irreverence toward the temporarily powerful) and arrogant-down (directed at the small guy).

Debt is a mistake between lender and borrower, and both should suffer.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.

Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.

To bankrupt a fool, give him information.

I am happy everywhere except in places where I see glitz and rich farts. I am happiest in Brooklyn, where the concentration of rich farts is minimal.

People employed in financial institutions are rarely interesting and even more rarely likable.

. . . the world in which we live has an increasing number of feedback loops, causing events to be the cause of more events (say, people buy a book because other people bought it),...

In the past, only some of the males, but all of the females, were able to procreate. Equality is more natural for females.

You are rich if and only if money you refuse tastes better than money you accept.

If you take risks and face your fate with dignity, there is nothing you can do that makes you small; if you don’t take risks, there is nothing you can do that makes you grand,...

Governments that try to shoot for a surplus hardly ever reach it.

What organized dating sites fail to understand is that the people are far more interesting in what they don’t say about themselves.

Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.

The best philosophers were not academics, but had another job, so their philosophy was not corrupted by careerism.

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication – this “nerdification,” to put it bluntly – is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

low risk” game.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn’t finish college. Too much emphasis is placed on formal education – I told my children not to worry about their grades but to enjoy learning.

I’m a capitalist but one who is smallist and localist, and who favours businesses where owners are still in charge.

The American people will eventually get hurt by this accumulated deficit. That’s the problem. We have too much deficit. We have to find a solution.

Luck is the grand equalizer.

The rationalist imagines an imbecile-free society; the empiricist and imbecile-proof one, or even better, a rationalist-proof one.

You will get the most attention from those who hate you. No friend, no admirer and no partner will flatter you with as much curiosity.

The mortgage crisis is a clear instance of consumers who needed protection. There was predatory lending to people who didn’t know what they were doing.

I lift heavy weights and sprint, but I am so bad at it that I develop severe injuries.

The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.

If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.

Alan Greenspan is unskilled; you don’t take the unskilled seriously.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the nonsucker, not exactly the same thing

Things always become obvious after the fact

Failure saves lives. In the airline industry, every time a plane crashes the probability of the next crash is lowered by that. The Titanic saved lives because we’re building bigger and bigger ships. So these...

In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation’s funeral at our expense.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status – but rarely for your wisdom.