A pretty good take on momentum that I hadn't seen (from 2011) here.
Momentum is strong: in US equities, where this investigation is focused, we see an average annualized return difference between the top and bottom momentum deciles of 16.5%/year, and an annualized Sharpe ratio of 0.82 (Post-WWII, through 2008). This strategy's beta over this period was -0.125, and it's correlation with the Fama and French (1992) value factor was strongly negative.
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In our 1927-2010 sample, the two worst months for the aforementioned momentum strategy are consecutive: July and August of 1932. Over this short period, the past-loser decile portfolio returned 236%, while the past-winner decile saw a gain of only 30%. In a more recent crash, over the three-month period from March-May of 2009, the past-loser decile rose by 156%, while the decile of past winners portfolio gained only 6.5%.
It looks like immigration reform will eventually grant amnesty to 10 million or so people, in the process encouraging more illegal immigration. I differ with my libertarian friends on this, as I would restrict immigration to those with high skills, like what those evil Canadians do.
An essential reference for this argument is Derek Parfit's Repugnant Conclusion. He notes that it seems inevitable ethicists will prefer billions of people barely subsisting to having a mere million people living the epitome of the good life. That is, the chart below shows the quality of life on the y-axis, the quantity on the x. There will always be a wide and short alternative that dominates the present, and thus, in the limit we will by moral choice have 100 billion humans living like wild dogs.
How can this be? Well consider the following. Say population A contains 1 million people living with an average gdp/capita of $30k/year. Then look at A+, which has that population plus 1 million more earning $20k/year. Clearly, A+ dominates A, because it's just the same thing plus more people, each of whom is presumably happy to be alive. But then, B has 2 million people making $25k/year. This has to dominate A+, because its the same average and total prosperity, plus greater equality. Thus, B, with more and poorer people, dominates A via transitivity. On can extend this ad infinitum, so basically Haiti writ large dominates Iceland or anywhere.
Low volatility had a bad month in May, and there has been a slew of commentary on this. See Abnormal Returns here for a bunch of links.
Deutsche Bank's 'The Quant View' by Rochester Cahan summarized the month's performance by noting that
'Last month we argued that the Low Volatility/High Dividend Yield trade was looking crowded, and cautioned that this could indicate elevated downside risk. It turns out that call was prescient.'
"Could" and "change in probability" means nothing, because it's consistent with anything, eg, if the rate rises it's hardly testable because the old and new probability are couched merely as possibilities, and if the probability doesn't change, that's in the forecast too ('could'). Now if they said, don't buy or short strategy X this month, that would have been prescient. I wonder if such people realize how disingenuous this is, or if they think their nuance is actually highly rigorous analysis.
In any case, last month was very bad for low volatility strategies, leading many researchers to reassess the validity of this approach. But, to put it in perspective, here's the total return over the past 12 months, using my beta data.
Clearly the past year, higher beta has been the better place to be, while lower beta has not. As the SP500 rose 26% from May 31 2012 through May 31 2013, this is not surprising: on average, over shorter horizons like years, betas are accurate, so higher beta stocks do better in rising markets, lower beta portfolios underperform. For example, over the past year, given the SP500 rose 26%, low beta stocks rose 70% of that, high beta 170% of that, implying betas of 0.7 and 1.7, which is totally consistent with the simple CAPM for the high beta stocks, and better-than-expected for the low beta portfolio (ie, its beta was 0.6 in that period). If you bought low vol stocks not understanding this, well, you really need to.
Now, many people seem to infer from this that low vol/beta has been a bad bet over the past year. If you evaluate yourself purely against the indices, this is true: deviations from the benchmark are only good if they are above the benchmark. Yet, in simple Sharpe ratio or Information ratio, high beta portfolio did poorly, even in this period. The clear winner is actually a Beta-1.0 portfolio, which has the highest Sharpe and Information ratio. Like low volatility, I have championed the beta 1.0 portfolio for a while, and I'm sure it will be a big fund someday.
Stats on US Portfolios, 5/31/12-5/31/13
Stats on International Portfolios, 5/31/12-5/31/13
Internationally we see the same thing: low vol did worse in raw returns, but much better in a pure Sharpe.
See data here. I think this highlights a profound truth, that as a practical matter investors don't care about Sharpe ratios as much as returns relative to the benchmark.
I'm a big Johny Hendricks (left) fan, but I think right now among 170 pounders, Erick Silva is the man, Hendricks next, then GSP. Just watch him sneak this triangle choke onto his opponent from last weekend's UFC in Brazil. I couldn't believe Silva didn't fall off because he was so high, but Silva obviously has great leg control. Standing, Silva moves like a cat, and I can't wait until he meets Hendricks after Hendricks beats GSP.
There's a short Danny Kahneman interview at the Daily Beast here. He notes why your best friends may not be your best advisors:
Friends are sometimes a big help when they share your feelings. In the context of decisions, the friends who will serve you best are those who understand your feelings but are not overly impressed by them.
That's the Kahneman I love to read, profound and interesting. But then he follows with this sentence:
For example, one important source of bad decisions is loss aversion, by which we put far more weight on what we may lose than on what we may gain.
I don't see loss aversion as being nearly as prevalent as lottery-loving: that is, picking things with small probabilities of big gains, as opposed to avoiding things with potentially large losses. Most really bad investments, those with the lowest expected returns, are things with large potential losses (lottery tickets, horse races, highly volatile stocks, options, penny stocks, etc.) This means people don't avoid them too much, rather, they prefer them too much.
But that's only one class of bad investments with large losses. Then there's picking up pennies in front of a steam roller, the kind of trade Kahneman's good friend Nassim Taleb argues is too common, where one basically sells insurance or options too cheap, making money most of the time but then occasionally blowing up and moving on to the next sucker. Kahneman seems highly respectful of Taleb's work, and neither try and reconcile these ideas, even though they are really at the top for both. That makes them more like interesting magazine writers (eg, Carl Zimmer, John Horgan) than scientists.
Loss aversion in practice is a curiosity, not common in its domain relative to riffs on its opposite. I think people who love quoting him merely because once you allow irrationality in equilibrium, you are no longer constrained, and Kahneman gives one the authority to do this. So, as much as I enjoy many things he says, I'd say he has been an enabler of sloppy thinking, net net.
Yale has a neat website with interviews with people doing research in affect, or moods, and how it affects us. There are interviews with Steve Pinker, Jon Haidt, and Dan Gilbert among others, though I already have heard from those guys, so I like the other videos.
For example, Gerald Clore argues that negative moods generate more analytic reasoning. Difficult problems generate negative affect, a reason why people do not like to 'think hard', and why trouble and depression can be a positive feedback loop.
American educator John Dewey said you don't learn anything unless you reach a problem, where reality says 'no, do something new.' Positive affect tells your brain, 'you are going in a good direction, and so have no reason to change stream.' As it's improbable we have it all figured out as a child, one should expect periods of lugubrious contemplation because that's the only way you'll really grow. Another reason for moderation in all things (clearly, no one wants to be dyspeptic all the time), a little more Adagio for Strings and less The Magic Flute.
Another great clip was by Cosmides and Tooby on the grammar of human arguments, which invariably are about costs, benefits, and mental states. Anger is usually triggered by the perception that someone is putting too little weight on your welfare given your relationship. People get angry when they think they were harmed for little comparable benefit, as if they were merely a pawn sacrificed for some more valuable piece.
I remember being quite angry during my litigation in part because many acquaintances who could have helped me a great deal chose not too, presumably because they valued the option for a lottery ticket in dealing with an uber-wealthy guy (or avoiding his negative lottery ticket) higher than helping me, so I got very little help (eg, innumerable facts needed attesting in court by experts, such as that mean variance optimization was not close to Telluride's IP, or simple unwritten rules in IP litigation that experienced people know).
If you understand the roots of your frustration, it's less frustrating.
Overconfidence may cause people to invest too much in volatile stocks because such stocks have a greater diversity of beliefs, and so if people dismiss the objectively bad odds of beating the market, such people will be drawn to stocks where they are in the extremum, and highly volatile stocks have the most biased extremums. One might think these people are irrational, but in the big picture people with this bias actually have a huge advantage, why Danny Kahneman said it's the bias he most wants his children to have.
Two economists at Washington State University looked at twitter accounts for sports prognosticators and found that confidence was much more important than accuracy in generating followers. Their sad conclusion: Pundits have a false sense of confidence because that's what the public, seeking to avoid the stress of uncertainty, craves.
In other words, to be popular (read: successful), you need to be unwarrantedly confident. This takes either an amoral cognitive dissonance or ignorance.
In an separate study, two psychologists found that people were introduced to strangers and then asked what the other person thought of them. Those expressing more confidence about their interaction later (not how well they did, but how confident they were in how well they did), generally made a better first impression as rated by the other person.
It's hard for me to accept that life is like dancing, where it's just as important to be skilled and show no self-consciousness. Supreme self-confidence is attractive in almost every important dimension: punditry, sex, sales--just not investing. It's surprising there aren't more bubbles.
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There's a reality TV show on restaurants, and it exposed a married couple who ran one restaurant as being especially wicked and incompetent (Amy's Baking Company). The owners responded to complaints on Facebook and showed the world what insolent, self-absorbed idiots they were. Of course, the popularity of this PR disaster has translated into a big success, as supposedly a new reality TV show based on the company is in the works.
It's good for regular people to learn through experience that famous people are often jerks or stupid. Perhaps then we will stop listening to their opinions on world events.
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So, some very high powered evolutionary psychologists (eg, Cosmides and Tooby) found that
Over human evolutionary history, upper-body strength has been a major component of fighting ability. Evolutionary models of animal conflict predict that actors with greater fighting ability will more actively attempt to acquire or defend resources than less formidable contestants will....Among men of lower socioeconomic status (SES), strength predicted increased support for redistribution; among men of higher SES, strength predicted increased opposition to redistribution.
That jibes with my observation. I guess I'm in the high SES group, generally, and among my weight lifting buddies, I'd say the vast majority are against redistribution policies, much more so than for my neighbors who come from the same demographic.
I'd like to think I believe in a smaller welfare state because it's truly the best policy, but maybe I'm just rationalizing self-interest. I think I'm not doing this, but then again, the guy writing this is right now is, in Jonathan Haidt/Michael Gazzaniga's view, just the narrator, the press secretary, of the 'real me', this illiterate part of my brain that has desires and beliefs at one of those Inception-like levels, where I think I'm objectively determining my beliefs, but instead I'm rationalizing a rationalization of a rationalization.
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If you are worried about the state of macro economics, don't worry, because it's all good. Some New York Fed economists find that a particular DSGE model predicted the 2008 fiasco just about perfectly.
This is all 'out of sample', in the same way the test data for neural nets is out-of-sample: if you exclude all the hundreds of functional forms that were tried that didn't work, one of them was fit to only prior data and predicted the out-of-sample data. That is, the projection from 2008 is being done in 2013. The degrees of freedom in this model would make a technical analyst blush.
I can understand the allure of this approach (economics is about modeling), but anyone who has been around a while should cop to the patent overfitting that goes on 'outside the model'. I would bet anyone that if they set this model up in real time, it will miss the next turning point...and there will be another DSGE model that would have worked.
David Blitz and Pim van Vliet, both of Robeco, and yours truly wrote a paper outlining the various explanations for the low volatility effect, Explanations for the Volatility Effect: An Overview Based on the CAPM Assumptions. The aim wasn't to trash or champion any particular approach, though I'm sure our biases show (we aren't in lock-step on this, note Blitz here vs. my approach here, which has a subtle distinction). As most papers on the low volatility focus on the data, often with very different motivations, we thought a paper addressing these various theories would be helpful.
In any case, we go over the following explanations:
Leverage constraints
Regulatory constraints
Constraints on short-selling
Relative utility
Agents maximize option value
Preference for skewness
Crash-aversion
one-period model
Attention-grabbing stocks
Representativeness bias
Mental accounting
If you are new to the literature I think its very helpful, because it has lots of references on seminal articles in the various threads, and you should be aware of what the various theories argue. As Nietzsche said, if you know the why, the how is infinitely bearable.
Robeco's Pim van Vliet on whether low-volatility stocks are expensive:
Basically, he says that looking P/E ratios they are slightly expensive. His low vol fund has a P/E ratio similar to the average, but on a dividend rate, it's actually cheaper.
He argues that low volatility stocks have predictable performance based on valuation, so in today's trendy environment, it pays to have a nuanced approach.
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Value and Momentum Everywhere by Asness, Moskowitz, and Pedersen just came out in the Journal of Finance, 4 years after appearing on the SSRN. It's a great paper highlighting two important factors for any equity investor. Indeed, I'd surely have it on the reading required reading list for anyone in the business, alongside classics on value via Fama and French's 1992 paper, and Jegadeesh and Titman's 10 year retrospective on momentum.
An interesting argument is that value and momentum are, well, everywhere: currencies, country bonds, commodities, and of course, equities. This suggests that, if you are a long-short investor (ie, zero beta to the index), you should really go broad when you are implementing these strategies.
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Her model generates the following result that I too find, namely that equity allocations are identical when people are envious. She also finds situations where this equilibrium implies a higher equity allocation than in the base case. I would think, if you took this further, you would find that when trendy risky investments become popular, their expected return is actually negative.
The paper stops short of the bigger implication: there is no risk premium in such a world. Further, if 'everyone' is buying a specific asset, it's expected return can be significantly negative in equilibrium. Instead, she suggests that investors preferences can be materially different when looking at pension plans. True, but she could be stronger.
This reminds me of Feynman's explanation for why the mass of the election was constantly revised upward over decades after Robert Millikan's initial estimate:
Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Similarly, people find piecemeal application of envy relevant, but currently aren't going 'all-in' because it's too large a change from the consensus. Instead, it simply explains little things, more and more little things. If you believe it's the truth, the benefit is that you will get to see more agreement over time, which is fun.
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Speaking of envy, Steve Wisdom points me to this observation on the Stockholm riots, another piecemeal application. Immigrants aren't happy, but not because they aren't doing well in absolute terms, just that relatively, things are not so good:
[Swedish immigrant] finds it hard to be as thankful as his parents still are to his adopted homeland. "They compare it to Baghdad or Somalia," he said. "But we younger immigrants only really know Sweden, and we just compare our situation to the one around us."
So remember that. Immigrants today are happy for their change in situation. They children won't be so grateful if they stay in the underclass, and will vote to redistribute accordingly. That's why I'm not a big fan of the always-interesting Bryan Caplan's call for unrestricted immigration.
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BTW, if you think you're smart, see if you can tell which way the bars move in this video, a test of which generates a 60% correlation with IQ, higher than that for reaction times (40%). It seems like a quick and easy way to administer IQ tests without worrying about cultural bias. If you're really smart, you'll understand that it's not a perfect predictor of IQ, or wisdom, so don't tell me about how this test is stupid because you are smart and don't do well on this test, because a smart person wouldn't make that argument.
Speaking of taboo topics, there's a big brouhaha for hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones after he mentioned, in a untaped supposedly off-the-record seminar, that women are underrepresented from 'macro trading' because children tend to divert their focus. Now, in many professions there are stark gender disparities and a strange thing in our times is that if one publically states this could be somewhat 'natural' all hell breaks loose. This is the kind of thing that makes us moderns idiots, where any really public person can't say truthful important things if they violate the axiom of equality (ie, all human demographics have exactly equal innate preferences and abilities for any activity conceivable).
In Isaac Newton's day, his big secret was that he believed the Trinity wasn't true, and he had to pretend it was true to save his job. That's a pretty small concession, practically, compared to the PC taboos of today.
As a practical example, among the several good changes they've made to wrestling to get it back into the olympics (Please vote to save wrestling here!) was to increase the number of women's weight classes at the expense of men's weight classes. There are at least 100 boys wrestling for every girl, why give them anything close to equal representation? Because it pleases some outsider's sense of fairness? Presumably, women like to wrestle as much as men, they just don't because of cultural norms This is absurd.
Research Affiliates (RAFI) suggests that you can dominate simple low volatility portfolios by blending them with some fundamental metrics. Specifically, value, cash-flow, dividends, and sales, combined into a 'fundamental value' metric, generates a 200 basis point return premium that can carry over into the low beta portfolio, all while generating 25% lower volatility. These are reasonable expectations.
I'm skeptical that dividends and sales add to the Sharpe ratio of this approach, but hey, at least it's four factors, not 40. One of the bigger opportunities here is that low volatility, is correlated with other metrics associated with higher returns like higher cash flow, value, low probability of default, etc. That is, it's like if small cap stocks had low betas, then clearly one should merge the two factors because they both are good selection criteria.
But then, it's easy to reach too far, and much value destruction comes from trading too much, overfitting, and that's what this kind of approach encourages. So, it takes great discipline trying to improve the low volatility approach whilst not overdoing it. The 200 basis point bogey suggests RAFI has realistic expectations.
In this video, Fiefie Li (right) notes two reasons for the low volatility attractiveness. First, Asness, Frazzini and Pedersen's leverage constrained investors. Second, her paper Agency and Institutional Investment, with Michael Brennan and Cheng on delegated investors maximizing excess (ie relative) returns. Both papers suggests irrational rules of thumb create incentives for massive misallocations of capital, which implies selling low volatility funds should be a piece of cake.
Interestingly, Li taught at UC Irvine, the same place Harin de Silva of Analytic Investors got his PhD, and also low volatility maven Bob Haugen. I would think this is a good place to look for personnel to help with low volatility.
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I bought a Powerball ticket for the $500MM lottery last Saturday, and was actually interviewed by a local TV crew when I bought my one ticket, and said something to the effect that $2 buys me several minutes of daydreams about buying ridiculous things (that $100k lake submarine in SkyMall magazine). Later I discovered a better reason for my purchase. In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, every quantum event happens. It's basically the only way many can reconcile the EPR paradox or Schrodinger's cat being alive and dead. All possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" or "universe". Therefore, after buying that ticket, I actually won the $500MM jackpot in many of those universes. Unfortunately, in this particular universe I did not win the lottery, but, I can take comfort that many of 'me' did win, and my utility function somewhere among those universes is insanely high. For some reason, I'm not enjoying that as much as I should based on the math.
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A neat paper highlights that married couples have higher divorce rates when the woman earns more than the man. Interestingly the hypothesis the authors give for this is 'gender identity', the idea that men and women think a man works outside the home, the woman inside, and there's a cost to deviating from this norm. They never try to motivate why men and women might think that's a good way to frame things. That strikes me as rather hollow, a patently arbitrary tradition that makes couples seem like stupid ciphers of sociological tides.
I think it's definitely true that men like women who make money, just not more than what they do, similar to what men say about intelligence (in speed dating surveys, men like their women smart, just not smarter). I also think women feel their man is not as dominant, and thus less masculine, when they earn more than him, related to research showing women have more orgasms with wealthier men. In either case, this highlights people are social animals, and so they don't maximize 'absolute wealth' but rather, something more contextual, which is often highly correlated with absolute wealth.
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It was a good week in wrestling, as the US hosted a match against Russia and Iran in New York City. While the US beat Russia pretty handily, and got killed by Iran, they had different teams for each match so it's kind of hard to compare Iran vs. Russia. I'm really excited by the young US wrestlers that won, especially Dake, Taylor, and Stieber. Also, the international wrestling body elected a new president from Serbia, and hopefully he will be more effective than the last guy, who reportedly thought that wrestling was old enough to not need lobbying at the Olympics--wrong! The first thing he did was implement new rules, most importantly, a cumulative score for the whole match, 2 points for a takedown, and two three minute periods.
Jon Vol sent me a little email saying he has a blog post on Taleb, and that it got picked up by a Taleb fansite, where at the bottom it is classified as "Filed Haters || Tagged Falkenstein." I'm not just a Hater, but rather, a type that can be applied to others! I wonder what our distinguishing characteristic is in their eyes?
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“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”
C S Lewis, Mere Christianity
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Now that wrestling is trying to get back into the Olympics, they are considering getting rid of singlets! I'd say, it's about time. Singlets simply aren't cool, and if high school kids suited up like cage-fighters I think the sport would be more popular.
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Heritage's dismissal of Jason Richwine is pretty rich indeed. To recap, he coauthored a study critical of immigration, basically saying that the new immigrants from Mexico would receive more benefits than generate in taxes. Someone looked up his 2009 dissertation, and it had the racy title 'IQ and Immigration Policy.'
It's truly a taboo topic, as demonstrated by his Harvard thesis adviser and famous labor economist George Borjas saying 'I have never worked on anything even remotely related to IQ, so don’t really know what to think about the relation between IQ, immigration, etc.' The NLS panel data that Borjas studies all the time has an IQ proxy (AFQT) in there that is highly powerful in regressions, and he has to know this. He also knows that the subject is not good for one's career, so I understand why he has trained his mind to not think about it, but it's surely an elephant in the room.
Interestingly, Edward Miller writes a lot about race and IQ, which is probably why he spent his career in an academic backwater. His seminal 1977 piece Risk, Uncertain and Difference of Opinion was really the first paper giving a theory as to why risk and return are inversely correlated, and was the first person to state in a journal one should invest in low beta/volatility stocks for this reason.
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If you can read Dutch, there's a new review of my book The Missing Risk Premium out there in a CFA magazine. I can copy, paste into a translator, and get a broken English translation that is good enough.
If any of you are puzzled by the low inflation rate, consider that in 2005, the Fed convinced themselves that house prices weren't in a bubble because a hedonically adjusted housing price index showed little movement. Sort of like our consumer price indices. From a Federal Reserve meeting that focused on home price appreciation circa 2005:
For example, over the four years from 2000 to 2004, the OFHEO index increased at a compound annual rate of 8.2 percent, while the constant-quality index increased at a 5.4 percent annual rate. As shown in exhibit 4, the current ratio of price over median family income derived from these two indexes is vastly different. If the OFHEO index is giving an accurate picture of what is happening to home prices, I think one could say with some confidence that prices have been bid up to unsustainable levels. However, if the constant-quality index is a better reflection of reality, home prices actually look somewhat low relative to median family income, particularly compared to the late 1970s. I believe the constant quality index provides a more accurate indication of what is happening to the price of a typical single-family home. In contrast, the OFHEO index is subject to upward biases that accumulate over time and distort ratios such as price-to-income and income-to-rents.
Clearly, that real estate adjustment wasn't helpful. Perhaps our current CPI is similarly biased? That is, if you used 1990's CPI methodology, inflation would be around 5%, and using 1980's, it would be 10% (see here). Were we wrong then, or now?
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Joseph Stiglitz has the following take-away from current events:
The big lesson that this crisis forcibly brought home—one we should have long known—is that economies are not necessarily efficient, stable or self-correcting.
Gee, that's what the latest data say? He has been saying that since he edited Samuelson's papers in 1970: markets are not efficient. His life's work has been on that theme, as his Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem posits market failure as the norm, and his Sappington-Stiglitz theorem suggests that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization.
I've never seen him seriously address government failure, other than the stupidity of IMF personnel, who he noted were rarely top students from Harvard, Oxford, or Princeton. If he thinks second-rate Yalies have negative productivity, what about your typical bureaucrat?
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Niall Ferguson's remark that Keynes's childlessness influenced his dismissive perspective on the long run created quite a firestorm, including a rather pathetic apology that will only encourage his enemies. I remember reading a Keynes biography around 1988 and the author's theme was that homosexuality was the key to why Keynes thought 'outside the box.' I personally doubt his homosexuality was so tenuously related to his economics it's hardly worth much thought, though perhaps it would rise to be worthy of an aside at a luncheon.
Diversity is supposedly this great thing because various minorities have different perspectives, why demographics have systematic predilections towards various parties and issues. It seems a matter of pure logic to accept that if different backgrounds can generate positive attributes, some could be negative, but if you ever say that you are a bigot.
I'm not anti-gay, and sympathize with their uniquely difficult coming out issues. Yet, I'm not sympathetic to the idea that if one asserts any negative consequence of being gay, it's homophobia. I see this as an example of the Left showing its power and making sure that issues it categorizes as taboo stay taboo.
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The latest low volatility continue to show the benefits of low volatility this year.
Any way one would make a low vol portfolio--volatility, minimum variance algorithm, beta--generates the same results. See betaarbitrage.com for the data.
Asness, Frazzini and Pedersen have an important paper countering Ronnie Shah of Dimensional's assertion that low volatility is an industry result. It isn't.
Kevin Simler has some thoughts on the economics of status. He basically argues it's very important and omnipresent. Never mentions the effect on risk premia, though I expect he wouldn't go that far. That is, status seeking is accepted by economists at explaining parochial things, but somehow it disappears when it comes to addressing risk premiums, or welfare analysis.
I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I fundamentally disagree with this idea. I think that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of hope. ~Debbie Millman
As someone who does the same thing most days, often coming up with nothing, I find this interpretation a real breakthrough.
... I've been reading a lot of Jaak Panksepp who studies 'affective neuroscience', the biology of emotions like rage, fear, lust, care, panic, grief, and play. He's famous for documenting when rats laugh via inaudible chirps that correspond to tickling and the appropriate brain scan signatures. Lots of mammals have the same emotions humans do, which should come as no surprise to dog owners. He notes that he purpose of play is to takes us to the point of bad things happening, which explains why my kids always seem to end play with someone crying. He sees an instinct for seeking social interaction that turns on once the stronger affects (fear, lust, rage) as well as hunger are in check. It's useful to have an instinct to seek novelty and company, and it appears this is hard-wired. If you take too much opiates, or are autistic, this instinct is stifled.
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As for the Rienhart and Rogoff brouhaha, I don't see the big deal given our total debt-to-GDP ratio is like 500% if you include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The fact that 90% isn't a hard tipping point is irrelevant, we are way past that. Further, given we have been running a Federal deficit above 5% of GDP since 2009 every year, the idea that this R and R research has caused great austerity implies a novel definition of austerity.
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I'm sympathetic to Barry Schwartz's admonition that we should satisfice more as a rule: optimizing too much leads to feeling bad about alternatives that are pretty similar. A lot in life is random, so if in picking a college or career you keep wondering 'what if?' you will be less happy and it's unhelpful because generally things you chose among were pretty similar. I think it's a very interesting question how and when to constrain choices you present others: too much choice is onerous, but more choice can better fit someone's unknown preferences. Unfortunately, those skeptical of the market seem drawn to think regulation could be of big help here; I think it's far better to leave such choices to those with skin in the game and a knowledge of the customers. That is, bureaucrats will often think more than 3 of something they don't care about is enough, because for them it is, but that's a very silly inference. The Bloggingheads discussion is below:
Cliff Asness: An hour interview with Cliff Asness.
It would be hard to improve upon Cliff's Big 4 Investment Principles:
Cheap stocks beat expensive stocks
High carry beats low carry
Low risk beats high risk
The trend is your friend
I would just add that, 'risk' doesn't really help understand these principles, because while you can tell a risk story for #1 and #2 they generally seem characteristics more than covariances, for #3 it goes the wrong way, and #4 it doesn't really seem relevant.
Sex and Envy: Tim Wadsworth at the University of Colorado Boulder finds that
“There’s an overall increase in sense of well-being that comes with engaging in sex more frequently, but there’s also this relative aspect to it,” he said. “Having more sex makes us happy, but thinking that we are having more sex than other people makes us even happier.”
Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses in bed. It's not much removed from my sons, whose misery is most affected by knowledge their brother can do something they can't. Wadsworth notes that regardless of the adjective--attractive, funny, smart, poor--these are only meaningful in a relative sense to peers, and so being sexually active only makes sense relative to others.
Here's a paper in the JFE by Cao and Han finding that total variance generates lower-than-average returns, in this case, in option markets. Selling the highest volatility options generates a higher positive return over time. Clearly, this is risky, but so is buying volatility. I think this is best explained as another example of lottery ticket preferences, people love to overpay for 100-1 longshots.
Charles Gallistel argues that the essence of calculation is read-write capability, and currently neurologists have no understanding of the physical basis of memory. His book is here. That is, "fire together/wire together", something we do know about neuronal synapses, doesn't lead to storing sums in any obvious way, though this seems to be happening in things from bees and ants to people. Once we figure this out, I think database architecture will undergo a quantum leap in productivity, though perhaps we never will.
OK, one day into blogging retirement and I'm posting, but some asked in the comments for the quote list I mentioned, which I thought I'd share. As all arguments need a premise, and no premise holds for all arguments, this highlights we need to know a lot of aphorisms to be wise.
I know I'm missing hundreds more good ones, and some here are much better than others. That is, 'moderation in all things' is highly profound. In contrast, I don't agree that "Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience", but I do think patience is really important, so I like that quote. Then there's "To generalize is to be an idiot", which I think is just wrong, but I find it fascinating that a thoughtful person thinks this is true.
Most quotes without attribution I merely forgot where I read them, or they are a paraphrase of someone, or a mishmash of several authors. I suppose one could google them and get a hit rate of 50%.
You rarely find a
nonconformist who goes it alone ~ Hoffer
A beautiful proof should appear inevitable, succinct, and
unexpected. ~ Hardy
A boy becomes an adult three years before his parents think
he does, and about two years after he thinks he does ~ General Lewis Hershey
A child’s goal is not to be a successful adult but a
successful child. ~
A feature of government must be judged good when for a given
purpose it uses the force of convention instead of physical force and its evil
chances. ~ Barzun
A gaffe is when a politician speaks the truth. ~ Michael Kinsley
A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by
good manners, is an excellent thing; but to 'hunger and thirst' after it is
often merely a symptom of spiritual diabetes.
~ Charlie D. Broad
A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool ~ Moliere
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. ~ H.H. Munro
A man can fail, but he isn't a failure until he blames
someone else. ~ J Paul Getty
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth
minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by
minding other people's business ~ Hoffer
A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the
art of getting drunk ~ Dr.Samuel
Johnson
A man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich
A man's homeland is where he prospers ~ Aristophanes
A mature man lives humbly for a great cause, an immature man
dies for it. ~
A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means
of blurring and obscuring thought ~ Hoffer
a passionate obsession with the outside world or the private
lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own
life ~ Eric Hoffer
A pathological liar is someone who tell untruths that serve
no obvious purpose. ~
A patient had a 50-50 chance of benefiting from visiting a
physician as of 1910. Medicine was more
like voodoo than science until the 20th Century. ~ Abraham Flexner
A person’s first duty, a young person’s at any rate, is to
be ambitious, and the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of
permanent value. ~ GH Hardy
A poet over 30 is pathetic
~ H.L. Mencken
A Pseudo-science consists of a nomenclature by which all
positive evidence as favors its doctrine is admitted, and all negative evidence
is excluded. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes.
A psychotic thinks 2+2
~5. A neurotic thinks 2+2 ~4 and can't stand it.
A scientific theory is a tool and not a creed. ~ J.J.Thomson
A sense of proportion, which implies priority, is the
essence of common sense; it requires the ability to compared ends, as opposed
to just means.
A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an
infinity of experiences. ~ Jacques Maritain
A spoiled child never loves his mother ~ Sir Henry Taylor
A successful life doesn't require that we've done the
best, but that we've done our best.
~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
A thing is not necessarily true because someone dies for it. ~ Oscar Wilde
A true scientist is known by his confession of ignorance ~ A.O.Foster
A wise man proportions his belief to experience. ~ David Hume
Ability, connections, and status are wealth
Again and again, the bright thought has occurred, "if
we can only define our terms, if we can only find the basic unit, if we can
spot the right 'indicators', we can then measure and reason flawlessly, we
shall have created one more science."
~ Jaques Barzun
All anger is self-righteous anger. There are few cynical opportunists, more
often ideologues and moralists.
All bad art is the result of good intentions.
All data are filtered, observation is necessarily
'theory-laden'. ~ N.R. Hanson
All flatterers are mercenary, and all low-minded men are
flatterers. ~ Aristotle
All movements go too far. ~ Bertrand
Russell
All our advantages have complimentary negatives at some
level
All supporters of totalitarian despots have hated the
bourgeois.
All things are difficult before they are easy. ~ Thomas Fuller
All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare ~ Spinoza
All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Next it is violently opposed. Last it is
recognized as self-evident. ~ Shopenhauer
Almost all inventors are extremely fond of their latest
idea, to the degree that their good judgment is affected.
Almost anyone can do science; almost no one can do good
science. ~ LL Larison Cudmore
Almost everything you do will be insignificant, but it is
very important you do it. ~ Ghandi
Always asking for finished products is a sure way to manage
projects into failure. One needs to
manage a process that involves iterations of imperfect work.
Always try to simplify your syntax and enrich your
vocabulary
An alcoholic is anyone you don't like who drinks more than
you do. ~ Dylan Thomas.
An expert is a man who has made all the
mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field. ~ Niels
Bohr
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary
to tell more than he knows ~ Dwight
Eisenhower
Analytic or creative work is best done when in a somewhat
lugubrious state of mind.
And no one lies as much as the indignant do. ~ Nietsche
and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by
those who could not hear the music ~ Friedrich
Nietzsche
Animals don't think about meaning.
Ants are the most selfless animals, yet they are also the
most warlike and take slaves. If you
don't value your self highly, how can you value other selves highly?
Anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and
artistic creation. ~ Charles
Frankel
Any explicit, complicated process invites its
circumvention.
Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good
carpenter to build one. ~ Lyndon B
Johnson
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from a rigged demo. ~ Andy Finkel
Anybody can become angry—that is easy; but to be angry with
the right person, and it the right degree, and at the right time, and for the
right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is
not easy. ~ Aristotle
Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Anyone can come up with very hard or very easy problems, the
key is to come up with interesting yet soluble problems.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything
new ~ Albert Einstein
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the
situation ~ Edward R Murrow
Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough. ~ Gustave Faubert
Anything you're good at contributes to
happiness. ~ Bertrand Russell
Arguments convincing to one group are often totally
unconvincing to others.
Aristotle maintained that women had fewer teeth than men;
although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this
statement by examining his wives' mouths.
~ Bertrand Russell
Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge
immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more
difficult. ~ Aquinas
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another. ~ John Dewey
art is something valuable, neither anticipated nor wanted
before it was created. Science creates
valuable ideas that are inevitable.
As farmers and manufacturing has declined, their status has
declined, and their subsidies have increased
As regulations proliferate, it's impossible to enforce them
all fairly. Enforcement becomes selective and capricious. Legislative
micromanagement is the road to tyranny.
As you age, your talents go from Will, to Quickness, no
judgment
At bottom are only two pure forms of legislation --
productive and redistributive. ~ Richard
A. Epstein
At the center of your being you have the answer; you know
who you are and you know what you want ~
Lao Tzu
Attention implies the withdrawal from some things in order
to deal effectively with others
Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time
left for serious thinking. ~ Francis
Crick
Bad ideas aren’t retracted, they are orphaned. ~
Bad perseverance is defined by excessive perseverance
stemming from ignorance of the situation, economics, or overconfidence. ~
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I
am doing. ~ Werner von Braun
Because geniuses can be eccentric doesn’t imply we should
elevate pettiness, boorishness, and irresponsibility with virtue
Because reputation lags achievement, we should expect people
to reach the zenith of their reputation well past the zenith of their productive
output ~ Richard Posner
Being a professional means doing your job on the days you
don't feel like doing it. ~ David
Halberstam
Being objective doesn’t imply being neutral, in fact more
the more you know the less neutral you
become
Better do a little well, than a great deal badly. ~ Aristotle
Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are
perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow,
while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing ~ Hoffer
Business is not like chess, but like poker, where chance and
asymmetric information demand anticipation and probability analysis.
By regulating action, which we can control, we indirectly
regulate feelings, which we cannot
Cargo Cult analysis is analysis that superficially looks
like sophisticated work, but in reality is missing the essence of true
analysis.
Childhood is about developing friendships, interests,
discipline and independence.
Children have never been good at listening to their elders,
but they have never failed to imitate them.
~ James Baldwin
Comfort without struggle—and the sense of insecurity that
motivates it—leads to self destructive decadence.
Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to
give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach
renunciation. ~ Hoffer
Common sense and Bayes theorem suggests that given two
persuasive speakers, you will find those which most agree with you as most
persuasive.
common sense is an intuitive grasp of reality, which takes
honesty ~
Common sense is as rare as genius. ~ Emerson
Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices
laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen. ~ Albert
Einstein
Confused thinking … leads nowhere in particular and can be
indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world. ~ Stanislav Andreski
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. ~ Nietzcshe
Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona
Lisa painted by a club? Creative ideas
do not spring from groups. The divine
spark leaps from the finger of God to the Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape
in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a
mechanical computer. ~ A Whitney
Griswold
Courage is a readiness to risk humiliation. ~ Nigel Dennis
Courage is about doing what you're afraid to do. ~ Eddie Rickenbacker
Courage is grace under pressure ~ Ernest Hemingway
Courage is no less a virtue because it is rarely needed
Courage is not demonstrated by assuming unpopular stands
from the past that subsequently became popular.
Courage is the most important virtue because it is the
hardest. ~ David Brooks
Crass self interest is often masked with pretexts such as
justice and fairness and process. ~
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of
bad training. ~ Anna Freud
Creative people are often neurotic, and tend to have more
anxiety, lower self-esteem and lower tolerance for stress than other
individuals.
Criticism is always a kind of compliment. ~ John Maddox
Cursed is everyone who places his hope in changing the
nature of man ~ Augustine
Data are like inkblot, you read into them your unconscious
preconceptions.
Death need not concern us because when we exist
death does not, and when death exists we do not. ~ Epicurus
Deep faith eliminates fear.
~ Lech Walesa
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for
the appointment by the corrupt few ~ George
Bernard Shaw
Democratic socialism leads away from socialism because
people eventually choose nonsocialist policies.
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight
acquaintance and without any visible reason
~ Lord Philip Dormer Stanlope
Do not be a hair splitter in whose hands the complicated
questions do not become simple, but the simple complicated.
Doing something important comparatively well gives meaning,
because people necessarily then appreciate you.
Don’t let a little dispute injure a great
friendship. ~
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The
world owes you nothing. It was here first.
~ Mark Twain
Don't look at what people say, look at what they do
Doubt is the essence of consciousness.
Economics involves the implications of individuals making
rational decisions given their constraints and sef-interest.
Education is an admirable thing, but is well to remember
from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. ~ Oscar Wilde
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything
he learned in school. ~ Albert
Einstein
Education would be so much more effective if its purpose
were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should
know how much they don’t know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.
~ Sir William Haley
Elegance and consistency are means to an end, which is
out-of-sample prediction.
Emphasis on models as the major difference is wrong, the
main difference is in variable selection and the transformation of those
variables.
Empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they with least wit
are the greatest babblers. ~ Plato
Equations are more important to me, because politics is for
the present, but an equation is something for eternity. ~ Albert Einstein
Errors are many, truth is unique. ~ Peter Kapitsa
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under ~ HL Mencken
Every man loves what he is good at. ~ Thomas Shadwell
Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision
for the limits of the world ~ Arthur
Schopenhauer
Every speech should contain only three main points. All else will be forgotten. ~
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. ~ Will Rogers
Everyone, according to the Japanese, has a hidden ikigai.
Everything ends badly ... otherwise it wouldn't end. ~ Koglan the Bartender
Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real
merits of the case ~ John Maynard Keynes
Everything is both simpler than we can imagine, and more
entangled than we can conceive. ~ Goethe
Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly. ~ Montaigne
Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued. ~ Goethe
Exempt from vulgar prejudices, but full of his own
Experience is a dear teacher, and fools will learn from no
other. ~ Ben Franklin
Experience is the Mother of science. ~ H.G.Bohn
Expert knowledge is limited knowledge ~ Winston Churchil
Experts are much better at describing, explaining,
performing tasks, and problem-solving within their domains than are novices,
but, with a few exceptions, are worse at forecasting than actuarial tables
based on historical, statistical models.
Experts not only know what works, they know what doesn’t
work. This makes them bad for
creativity.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored ~ Aldous Huxley
Facts without theory is trivia. Theory without facts is bullshit.
Facts, however, will ultimately prevail; we must therefore
take care that they be not against us. ~
Francis Bacon
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science,
for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do
little harm, as everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness. ~ Charles Darwin
For creative thought, common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgment is that the
new ideas shall look like the old ones.
In other words it can only act by suppressing originality. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
Forget past mistakes.
Forget failures. Forget
everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. ~ William Durant
Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them ~ Suzanne Necker
Friends aren't soulmates, they are people you do things with
From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35 she needs good looks. From 35
to 55, good personality. From 55 on, she
needs good cash. ~ Sophie Tucker
Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience ~ Comte de Buffon
Give not advice without being asked, and when desired, do it
briefly. ~ George Washington
Given the difficulties forecasting the future, it is very
useful to simply know your present condition
~
Good judgment comes from experience, and
experience comes from bad judgment. ~ Barry LePatner
Good models are models useful for making important
decisions.
Good warriors are indolent laborers
Great ideas are new, true, and important
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events,
small minds discuss people. ~ H.G.Rickover
Great young innovators make radical simplifications that
allow them to leapfrog the expert’s relative advantage in technical knowledge.
Older innovators are most often praised for their wisdom and judgment. ~
Greatests crimes are of excess rather than need
Growing up is about developing friendships, interests,
discipline and independence. ~
Guilt is feeling bad about what you did, shame feeling bad
about yourself. Choose guilt. ~
Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has
something to do with struggling, enduring, and accomplishing. ~ George Sheehan
Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
Have strong opinions weakly held. They are then theories you test.
Have the courage to change the things you can, the patience
to accept the things you can't, and the wisdom to know the difference ~ Serenity Prayer
He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer. ~ Shakespeare
He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the
pressure of age, though to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age
are equally a burden. ~ Aristotle
He who is to be a good ruler must have first
been ruled. ~
He who is unable to live in society, or who has
no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.
He who praises everybody, praises nobody ~ James Boswell
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may
be sure is himself a knave ~ George
Berkeley
Holding beliefs proportionate to evidence requires humility
Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be
divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not. ~ W.H.Auden
humans are tribal, so being tribal makes one human.
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for
a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not
bear serious examination is false wit. ~
Aristotle
I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the
future, but only in the present can I act.
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental
wellness. ~ Abraham Maslow
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted
to pleasure ~ John D Rockefeller
I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at ~ Wilson Mizner
I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer
god than you do. ~ Stephen F. Roberts
I desire to go to Hell, not Heaven. In Hell I shall enjoy the company of popes,
kings, and princes, but in Heaven are only beggars, monks, hermits, and
apostles. ~ Machiavelli
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is
trying to please everybody. ~ Bill
Cosby
I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank
films. Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity...
and, most of all, intellectualism. ~ John
Ford
I love him who desires not too many virtues. One virtue is
more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to
cling to.
I never saw a pessimistic general win a
battle. ~ Dwight
Eisenhower
If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon
becomes the subject of criticism. ~ Kant
If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not
be four friends in the world, ~ Pascal
If an experiment comes out as expected it can be very nice,
but if it can only be considered great if it is a surprise. ~
If any philosopher had been asked for a definition
of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would
certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at
all. ~ Bertrand Russell
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. There
is no point making a fool of yourself. ~
WC Fields
If Columbus had turned back, no one would have
blamed him. Of course, no one would have remembered him either.
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast
enough ~ Mario Andretti
If God is dead, everything is allowed. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
If I asked people what they wanted, I would have given them
faster horses ~ Henry Ford
If many years go by in a field in which no significant new
facts come to light, the field sharpens up the opinions and gives the
appearance that the problem is solved. ~
Thomas Gold
If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be
the supremely valid human experience. ~ William
James
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would
ever get done. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. ~ Albert Einstein
If we do not discipline ourselves the world
will do it for us. ~ William Feather
if we expect people to take us as we are, we should expect
others to also be as they are ~
If we take man as he is we make him worse, if we take man as
he should be we make him what he can be
~ Goethe
If you buy the why, the how is infinitely bearable ~ Nietsche
If you can distinguish between good advice and bad advice,
then you don’t need advice. ~ VanRoy
If you get a good wife, you will become very happy; if you
get a bad one, you will become a philosopher—and that is good for every man. ~ Aristotle
If you lose your temper, you’ve lost the argument.
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
But if you really make them think, they'll hate you. ~ Don Marquis
If you read a book and aren't a better person, there's no
reason to have read it.
Ignorant men raise questions that have already been
answered. ~ Goethe
In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able
to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the
development of talent around them ~ Hoffer
In answering an opponent, arrange your ideas, but not your
words. ~ CC Colton
In banking, it’s credit, spread, and volume. You can’t have all three.
In disagreements with loved ones, deal only
with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
In every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out.
In prosperity our friends know us, in adversity we know our
friends
In public speech, tell jokes in threes. Start silly, get more serious.
In real life, good people are interesting and bad people are
dull, while in fiction it is the opposite.
In science, read the newest books. In literature, read the oldest. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
In the absence of either fear or hope, only the present
moment has any reality: you do what is most amusing, or least boring, at each
passing moment. ~
In theory there is no difference between theory and
practice. In practice there is. ~ Janvande
Snepscheut
Include a fresh metaphor or illustration in every major
presentation
Intolerant people think they are applying integrity
Is does not imply ought, but it informs it.
It doesn't have to be perfect to be good
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't
matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. ~ Richard Feynman
It has been my experience that folks who have not vices have
very few virtues ~ Abraham Lincoln
It is a golden rule not to judge men by the opinions but
rather by what their opinions make of them.
~ George Lichtenberg,
It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits
from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. ~ Victor Davis Hanson
It is a truism to say that a good experiment is precisely
that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we
have to worry about its interpretation, about what it really means. ~ Peter Medawar
It is always probable that something improbable will happen. ~ Logan Bleckley
It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your
business. ~ Gertrude Stein
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. ~ George Bernard Shaw
It is difficult for people to sort out problems on the fly
as failure spreads through a complex system.
It is equally a mistake to hold one’s self too high, or to
rate one’s self too cheap. ~ Goethe
It is far better to be flexible and know how to learn,
rather than trying to make sure you get it right the first time and don’t make
mistakes.
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when
you know that you would lie if you were in his place ~ HL Mencken
It is important to be accepted, more so than to have
specific friends.
It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense and
honesty, which makes me against most of what we do. ~ HL Menken
It is much better to know something about everything than to
know everything about one thing. ~ Pascal
It is much easier to make measurements than to know exactly
what you are measuring. ~ J.W.N.Sullivan.
It is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt,
as far as possible, all things. ~ Descartes
It is not good to have everything one wants ~ Pascal
It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores
most in controversy—but he who has shown the better temper ~ Samuel Butler
It is not once nor twice but times without
number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.
It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles. ~ Machiavelli
It is one of the blesings of old friends that you can afford
to be stupid with them ~ Emerson
It once took 90% of our population to grow our food. Now it
takes 3%. Are we worse off because of the job losses in agriculture?
It takes years of training it ignore the obvious.
It’s always tempting to do good at someone else’s expense ~ Bastiat
It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when
you’re a winner, when you’re number one.
What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner. ~ Vince Lombardi
It's good to have dreams, but not illusions. ~
It's not what you have done, but the life you lead. Karma exists
I've never known a person to live to be one hundred and be
remarkable for anything else. ~ Josh
Billings
Just as flattery of a friend can pervert, so the insult of
an enemy can sometimes correct. ~ Augustine
Justice is Equality…but equality of what? ~ Book 3, Aristotle's Politics
Keep you fears to yourself, but share you courage with
others. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
Keys to a convincing theory: simple enough to be apprehended
without much strain but convoluted enough to require a caste of interpreters.
Kids don’t need encouragement thinking they understand
things they have only the vaguest understanding of.
Kids gossip more in part because they expect more from their
friends, and thus experience many petty betrayals that they have to talk about.
Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom ~ Herman Hesse
Knowledge has to be sucked into the brain, not pushed into
it ~ Victor F. Weisskop
Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject itself, or know
where to find it. ~ Johnson
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning
of happiness ~ Santayana
Laws are silent in time of war. ~ Cicero
Laymen feel that facts are easy and theory is
difficult. It is often the other way
around.
Less is More ~ Robert
Browning
Liberty is more feasible that equality, and pursuing liberty
hurts equality less than pursuing equality hurts liberty.
Literature is mostly about sex and a little about having
children. Life is the other way around. ~ David Lodge
Live your life so that if someone says 'Be yourself' it's
good advice. ~ Robert Orben
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the
enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change. ~ Bertrand
Russell
Many can bear adversity, but few contempt. ~ ThomasFuller
many friends are the key to happiness ~ Epicurus
Many think we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what
we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by
extending the number of important operations which we can perform without
thinking about them. ~ Alfred North
Whitehead
Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his
toil. ~ JS Mill
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent
instantly recognizes genius. ~ Arthur
Conan Doyle
Men are born for each other’s sake, so either teach people
or endure them ~ Marcus Aurelius
Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if
they were equal. ~ James Anthony Froude
Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations
than in their particular observations. Machiavelli
Men believe in the truth of anything so long as they see
that others strongly believe it is true
Friedreich Nietzsche
Men do not desire merely to be rich, but to be richer than
other men. ~ John Stewart Mill
Men need sex more than women, and this gives women power
over men.
Moderation in all things
~ Democritus
Modesty is a virtue not because it implies servile humility,
but because it implies a combination of honesty and knowledge
Monarchy operates on the principle of honor, republicanism
on virtue, despotism on fear, and totalitarianism on ideology or (seen from
within) on truth.
Money, it turns out, is exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't
have it, and thought of everything else once you did. ~ James Baldwin
More than pay what makes for a happy organization is
confidence that higher-ups are making good decisions.
Most analytical work is nonproductive: little is new and a
significant portion is actually incorrect.
Most new ideas are bad.
Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest ~ Nietsche
Most people do what they to do, no matter how heroic,
because they have no option, they have a job to do so they go on and do it.
Most people find confidence attractive and convincing in presenting ideas. Yet, it should be noted that confidence often
implies ignorance or duplicity.
Most questions about correct word usage are questions of
custom and authority rather than grammatical logic.
Most questions are really statements.
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred
or disguised love of power. ~ Bertrand Russell
Natural wealth is both limited and easily obtained, but
vanity is insatiable
Nature isn't good or bad, it's indifferent.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
a man’s character, give him power. ~ Abraham
Lincoln
Neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim. ~ Elie Weisel
Never complain and never explain. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Never explain--your friends do not need it, and your enemies
will not believe you anyway. ~ Elbert Hubard
Never mistake motion for action ~ Ernest Hemingway
Never speak ill of yourself, your friends will always say
enough on that subject ~ Charles
Maurice
Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is
continuing on a road which has led him to great success ~ Friedrich Hayek
New theories, when first proposed and supported, may make
the first page of the New York Times.
Their demise rarely makes even page 18.
Nihilism, cynicism, and sarcasm are the symptoms of bored
and guilt-ridden people who belittle those who create their comfort.
No conqueror believes in chance. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
No delusion is greater than the notion that method and
industry can make up for lack of motherwit, either in science or in practical
life. ~ Thomas Huxley
No great genius has ever existed without some touch of
madness ~ Aristotle
No great philosophy is ever proven wrong, just irrelevant. ~
No guest is so welcome in a friend’s house that he will not
become a nuisance after three days ~ Titus
Macuious Plautus
No human thing is of serious importance ~ Plato
No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn
back. ~ Turkish Proverb
No one washes a rented car
No one would choose a friendless existence on
condition of having all the other things in the world. ~
No opinion should be held with fervor. None holds with fervor that 7x8 ~56, because it is known that this is the
case. Fervor is necessary only in
commending an opinion which is doubtful or demonstrably false. ~ Voltaire
No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good. ~ Bishop Mandell Creighton
No science ever defends its first principles. ~ Aristotle
No single piece of macroeconomic advice given by the experts
to their government has ever had the results predicted. ~ Peter Drucker
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it
doesn't matter anyway ~ Richard
Feynman
Nobody forgets where he buried the hatched ~ Frank McKinney
Nobody speaks of a beautifful view for 5 minutes ~ Robert Lewis Stevenson
Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain
forever a child
Nothing is ever achieved without enthusiasm. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come ~ Victor Hugo
Often times what people do that’s valuable is very simple,
but they make it seem more complex in order to flatter themselves
Older, accomplished people often fail miserably to
appreciate new theories.
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares
nothing ~ Oscar Wilde
One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in
one, which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed. ~ Aristotle
One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in
complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the
essence of life. ~ Anatole France
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is
the belief that one's work is terribly important ~ Bertrand Russel
One should respect an honest person even if he expresses
opinions differing from one’s own. ~ Albert
Einstein
Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from
planned search for specific objectives.
A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the
individual to follow his own curiosity.
~ Irving Langmuir
Only by reading great works can you really get an inkling of
how a great intellect works.
Only mediocrity can be trusted to always be at its best ~ SirMaxBeerbohm
Only the simplest mind can believe that in a
great controversy one side was mere folly
~ AJ Kane
Only thoughts reached by walking have value. ~ Nietsche
Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by
the intellect. ~ Herbert Spencer
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most
people don’t recognize them ~ Ann
Landers
Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ~ John
Adams
Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times.
People have always been like this ~ Gustave
Flaubert
Our minds are lazier than our bodies ~ La Rochefoucauld
Our narrative self interprets the many parallel processes
going on in our brains ~
Our task is not to penetrate the essence of things, the
meaning of which we do not know anyway, but rather to develop concepts which
allow us to talk in a productive way about phenomena in nature ~ Niels Bohr
Patience is the companion of wisdom. ~ Augustine
Peace of Mind comes from not wanting to change others ~ Gerald Jampolsky
Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge. ~ Holbrook Jackson
People are best judged by their actions ~ Max Perutz
People can do remarkably well in controlling complex
machines whose workings are fully understood and open to view. ~ Robert Chiles
People know more than they can articulate (eg, grammar)
People want to hire someone more intelligent but less
ambitious than themselves.
People who need advice are least likely to take it.
People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep
one foot on the ground. ~ Marcel
Proust
Personal retribution is the justice of those with a weak
state
Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. ~ Jonathan Kozol
Play is about taking things to the point of bad things
happening
Politicians seek to elicit the words, “I don’t know why. I
just like the guy.”
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. ~ Leonardo DaVinci
Prejudices, not faulty reasoning, are the main
obstacles of truth ~
Preparing for battle, plans were essential. But once
the battle was joined, plans were useless.
~ Dwight Eisenhower
Pride is in general censured and decried, but mainly by
those who have nothing to be proud of ~ Arthur
Schopenhauer
Progress has been much more general than retrogression ~ Darwin
Prose talent depends on having something to say and an
interesting, highly developed way of saying it.
~ Fitzgerald
Quoting one is plagiarism. Quoting many is research. ~
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s own ignorance. ~ Confucius
Reality is not subject to the limits of human knowledge. ~ Troy Gustavel
Religion is about telling us what we shouldn't do,
spirituality about telling us to feel comfortable doing what we want
Republics decline into democracies and democracies
degenerate into despotisms.
Reputation is what you are perceived to be, your character
is what you really are.
Rudeness is a weak man’s imitation of strength ~ George Orwell
Sadness diminishes a man’s powers ~ Spinoza
Science is a great many things, but in the end they all
return to this: science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of
what does not. That needs more courage
than we might think. ~ Jacob
Bronowski
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with
stones. But a collection of facts is no
more a science than a head of stones is a house. ~ Henri Poincare
Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that
are always successful. The rest is
literature. ~ Paul Valery
Scientific progress is the cumulative growth of a system of
knowledge over time, in which useful features are retained and unuseful
features are abandoned.
Scientific research is not itself a science: it is still an
art or craft. ~ William H. George
Scientists are always dispensable, for in the long run,
others will do what they have been unable to do themselves ~ Peter Medwar
Search for pleasure, search for power, search for
meaning. The last is most important. ~
Seek simplicity and distrust it ~ Alfred North Whitehead
Seek, above all, for a game worth playing ~ Robert S. de Ropp
Selfishness and altruism are always present in children, one
towards group mates, the other towards outsiders. ~
Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice
of guilt within us ~ Hoffer
Sexiness is unselfconscious and full of self-confidence,
indifferent to the effect he or she is producing, and uninfluenced by others.
There must be physical attraction, but beauty is unnecessary
Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a
failure. ~ Knute Rockne
Silence is sometimes the best answer.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci
Small opportunities are often the beginning of great
enterprises. ~ Demosthenes
So far as I can remember, there is not one word
in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
~ Bertrand Russell
So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are
not yet on your own true path but on someone else’s ~ Friedrich Nietzche
Some think people who are equal in any respect are equal all
respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal ~ Aristotle
Sometimes being brutally honest seems cruel but is
kind. Sometimes it is just cruel.
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot
do, than what one can do. ~ Lin
Yutang
Stories embody our search for meaning in an
otherwise indifferent world, or experience of the rapture of being alive.
Stress isn’t caused by bad times, but by working where you
feel your talents are being underappreciated.
~ Lynn Cheney
Stupidity is without anxiety. ~ Goethe
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into
thinking they can’t lose. ~ Bill Gates
Success is from effort, ability, and luck.
Success is peace of mind, attained only through self
satisfaction knowing you made the effort to do the best you are capable
Suffering only has meaning when you cannot control the
cause. Your attitude can then be heroic. ~
Take the time to deliberate, but when the time for action
arrives, stop thinking and go in ~ Andrew
Jackson
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius
hits a target no one else can see. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Talent should be judged at its best, character at its worst ~ Lord Acton
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook ~ William James
The average man believes a thing first, and then searches
for proof to bolster his opinion ~ Elbert
Hubbard
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life,
wants another one which shall last forever.
~ Anatole France
The benefit of optimism is that it mitigates discouragement
The best apology against false accusers is silence. ~ Milton
The best use of life is to spend it for something that will
outlast it. ~ William James
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. ~ Linus Pauling
The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an
opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.
~ George Orwell
The central business of adulthood, finding serious things to
tie yourself down to
The chief difference between free capitalism and State
socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own
advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so
hypocritically and under false pretenses
~ HL Mencken
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and
nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. ~ Galen
The devil can cite Scripture for his own purpose ~ Shakespeare
The difference between a good and excellent employee is that
the good one does what you tell them, and the excellent one does what you
want.
The difference between an average artist and a bad what is
what he can draw. The difference between
a good artist and an average one is what he sees.
The difference between life and the movies is that a script
has to make sense. ~ David Schmaltz
The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people ~ Chistopher Morley
The essence of sport is courage. ~ Thomas McGuane
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. ~ Henry Bergson
The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence
whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the
majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than
sensible. ~ Bertrand Russell
The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be
a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. ~ Mark Caine
The fortune of our lives…depends on employing well the short
period of our youth ~ Thomas
Jefferson
The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the
philosophy itself. When we ask the time,
we don’t want to know how watches are constructed. ~ Geoge Lichtenberg
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and
evil. ~ Cicero
The goal of life is to be happy and have meaning. Meaning comes from doing things others value. It's a balance, and takes prudence.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is
the illusion of knowledge. ~ Daniel J.
Boorstin
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be
what we pretend to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues
increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them. ~
The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the
mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them. ~ Aristotle
The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and
grace, making the best of circumstances.
The implied volatility is the wrong volatility we use in the wrong model in order to
get the right price. ~ Peter
Carr
The importance of a problem should not be judged by the
number of pages devoted to it. ~ Albert
Einstein
The insights that make you rich change every couple
years. Insights that make you happy
don’t. ~
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind
is a faithful servant. ~ Einstein
The judge should not be young: he should have learned to
know evil, not from his own soul, but from long observation of the nature of
evil in others. But knowledge should be
his guide, not personal experience. ~ Aristotle
The man who early on regards himself as a genius is lost. ~ George Christoph Lichtenberg
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees
absolutely nothing at all ~ Oscar
Wilde
the mark of a great writer is the ability to interest the
uninterested in the subject she writes about
~
The more fundamental a scientific law the more briefly it
can be stated. ~
The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that
heralds new discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's
funny..." ~ IsaacAsimov
The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for to
them everything is possible. ~ Alexander
Chase
The most important characteristic of a good manager is
someone who can recognize value, whether certain projects add value or simply a
waste of time.
The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that
on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does more
good or harm. ~ Walter Bagehot
the most troublesome problem which confronts social
engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally
important, how to provide against them.
~ Hoffer
The most vicious liars tell the truth in a way that leaves a
false impression, leaving them technically immune to the charge of lying.
The old aren't good at science, the young aren't good at
politics ~ Michael Chricton
The old repeat themselves, and the young have nothing to
say. The boredom is mutual ~ Jacques
Bainville
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine
that age brings wisdom. ~ HL
Mencken
The only way to deep happiness is to do something you love
to the best of your ability ~ Richard
Feynman
The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical
atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not. ~ Eric Hoffer
The point to remember is that what the government gives it
must first take away. ~ John Striderr
Coleman
The poor don't need money or pity, they need temperance,
diligence, thrift and other bourgeois virtues.
The preoccupation with detail necessary for works of
creative genius is correlated with an
inability to manage or delegate ~
The problem with heart disease is the first symptom is often
fatal. ~ Michael Phelps
The real power of an individual isn't what they know, but
the ability to learn.
The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as
ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we
hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We
forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when
we are ready to sacrifice ourselves. ~ Hoffer
The responsibilities we have as individuals can't be given
to society: education, parenthood.
The secret to being a bore is to tell everything. ~ Voltaire
The state of nature is not peace, but of war. ~ Kant
The stupid neither forgive nor forget. The naïve forgive and forget. The wise forgive but do not forget. ~ Thomas
Szasz
The sum of our knowledge is not like what the mathematicians
call a convergent series … where the study of a few terms may give the general
properties of the whole. ~ George
Thomson
The superior man is distressed by his lack of ability ~ Confuscious
The test of man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a
quarrel ~ George Bernard Shaw
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single
sentence: the abolition of private property.
~ Karl Marx
The thing that we call failure is not the falling down, but
the staying down ~ Mary Pickford
The thing you are most certain of, that your consciousness
exists, you cannot prove. ~
The thruth is that there is no terror untempered by some
great moral idea. ~ Jean-Luc Godard
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of
folly is to fill the world with fools. ~
Herbert Spenser
The ultimate test of our integrity is not how we deal with
those whom we agree but how we deal with those who we do not agree. ~ Nathaniel Branden
The value of an ideal has nothing whatever to do with the
sincerity of the man who expresses it. ~
Oscar Wilde
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children,
but that children produce adults. ~ Peter
DeVries
The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to
make the most of yourself. ~ Wallace
Wattles
The virtue of simplicity is to avoid affectation.
The wise learn many things from their foes. ~ Aristophanes
The wise man will want to be with him who is better than
himself. ~ Aristotle
The world has always been the same; and there is always as
much good fortune as bad in it. ~ Machiavelli
The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars,
or great scholars great men ~ Oliver
Holmes
The worst hatred is that which has superseded deep love. ~ Euripides
The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and
conform at the same time. They have now
solved this by defying their parents and copying one another. ~ Quentin Crisp
Theory is an explicit set of instructions for building a
mechanical imitation system
Theory is knowledge that doesn't work. Practice is when
everything works and you don't know why.
~ Hermann Hesse
There are some things so stupid that only an intellectual
can believe them ~ George Orwell
There are three reasons for punishment:
deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation.
There are too many people who imagine that there is
something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your
country, and the worst of those who defend it.
~ Margare Thatcher
There is a condition worse that blindness, and that is,
seeing something that isn't there ~ L
Ron Hubbard
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless
knowledge. ~ Bertrand Russell
There is no great genius without a mixture of
madness.
There is no method but to be very intelligent. ~ TS Eliot
There is nothing more unequal than the equal
treatment of unequal people. ~ Thomas Jefferson
There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has not said
it. ~ Cicero
There is only one good, that is knowledge; there is only one
evil, that is ignorance. ~ Aristotle
There is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter
offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom. ~ Aristotle
Things are never so bad that they can’t be made worse. ~ Humphrey Bogart
Things exist before their idea does: the nation formed
before the concept of a nation.
Think of your audience as intelligent but impatient readers ~
This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is
without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for
food and shelter ~ Hoffer
Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at
peace aren't good at war. ~ Winston
Churchill
Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave
equality and fraternity more than they do freedom ~ Hoffer
Those with the best ideas are right about the most important
things, not about the most things, or the most complicated things. ~
Three ideas are central to science, that of equilibrium,
cause and effect, and chance
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is
essential to difficult achievement. ~ Bertrand
Russell
To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter
is to be wholly free from a sense of futility
~ Hoffer
To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of
creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience
contradicts them is the next. ~ William
James
To be great is to be misunderstood. ~ RalphWaldoEmerson,
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others ~ Albert Camus
To be liked tell people things about themselves that they
would like to be true. ~
To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. ~ Confucius
To change and to improve are two different things. ~ Germanproverb
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one
of the first requisites of sanity. ~ Oscar
Wilde
To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy. ~ Hippocrates
To do something, say something, see something, before
anybody else—these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which
other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Lifetimes of ecstasy crowded into a single
moment. ~ Mark Twain
To escape criticism
do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. ~ Elbert Hubbard
To generalize is to be an idiot. To particularize alone is a distinction of
merit. ~ Blake
To inspire kids make them feel special, part of a brave
corps on a secret, impossible mission. ~
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even
better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. ~ Charles Darwin
To make an improvement in the state of the art, one has to
know the state of the art. This is
inevitably detail oriented work.
To many, total abstinence is easier than total moderation. ~ St.Augustine at Hippo
To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom. ~
To those who think, life is a comedy, to those who feel,
life is a tragedy ~
To Unlearn is as hard as to Learn ~ Aristotle Politics B4
Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent
experience ~ William James
Truth springs from argument among friends ~ David Hume
Ugly things are made by those who strive to make something
beautiful, and beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something
useful ~ Oscar Wilde
Unless a man has talents to make something of himself,
freedom is an irksome burden ~ Hoffer
Use nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs
Use the phrase 'it's a bit like… ' in speeches
We all have the strength to endure the misfortunes of
others. ~ La Rochefoucauld
We all start in ignorance and aim for virtue
We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the
better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory. ~ Cicero
We are less hurt by the contempt of fools than by the
lukewarm approval of men of intelligence
~ Luc de Clapeirs deVauvenargues
We are making forecasts with bad numbers, but bad numbers
are all we've got. ~ Michael Penjer
We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact ~ Hoffer
We are what we repeatedly do. Character is a habit. ~
We ask advice, but we mean approval ~ CC Colton
We believe a scientist because he can substantiate his
remarks, not because he is eloquent and forcible in his enunciation. In fact, we distrust him when he seems to be
influencing us by his manner. ~ I.A.
Richards
We believe in axioms or assumptions, not because they are
deduced from the real world, but because the consequences they imply fit the
real world. ~
We excuse the ignorant; we forgive the wicked ~
We have a tendency to assume people are a unity, and thus
good people all good, etc. But the fact
that Hitler was good to dogs and children isn’t a paradox. ~ Richard
Posner
We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad
purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not
so wretched as we are base ~ Montaigne
We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win. ~ Edward Gibbon
We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is
to know what we want to prove. ~ Emile
Chartier
We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from
our schoolmasters, and one from the world.
The third contradicts all that the first two teach us. ~ Charles Louis de Secondate
We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out
against us. We have no cause for complaint.
What is confidence?
Ignorance, ignorance, sheer ignorance – you know there’s no confidence
to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession, I think,
that you’re timid or careful. ~ Orson
Wells
What is fruitful alone is true. ~ Goethe
What is said when drunk has been thought out beforehand. ~ Flemish proverb
What makes a principle a principle is our willingness to
apply it to our own disadvantage.
What was hard to endure is sweet to recall ~ European Proverb
Whatever enlarges hope will exalt courage. ~ Samuel Johnson
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is
always someone to tell you that you are wrong.
There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that
your critics are right. To map out a
course of action and follow it to the end, requires some of the same courage a
soldier needs. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
When a debater’s point is not impressive, he brings forth
many arguments, ~ Talmud
When a woman isn't beautiful, people tell her. "You
have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair. “
~ Anton Chekhov
When choosing a boss, being competent is more important than
being nice.
When making a point, don’t feel compelled to say everything
you know about something. It just
obscures your point. ~
When people are free to do as we please, they
usually imitate each other ~ Hoffer
When subjects felt happy, there is a decrease of activity in
the regions of the cerebral cortex that are committed to forethought and
planning. ~
When we feel that we lack whatever is needed to secure
someone else’s esteem, we are very close to hating him ~ Luc de Clapeirs de Vauvenargues
When you have nothing to say, say nothing ~ Charles Colton
When you become senile, you won't know it ~ Bill Cosby
Whenever a subject takes seriously definitions and origins,
it is involved in blather, not progress.
~
Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the
masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority ~ Hoffer
Whereas wisdom favors the probabilities, folly favors only
the possibilities. ~ Gracian
Balthasar
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process
he does not become a monster. ~ Nietsche
Wide, cohesive lack of consistency is a great strength,
because it can then be used to prove anything right, something found in all
creeds.
Woe unto you, when all men speak well of you! ~ Luke,6:26
Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious
effort to understand the world ~ Bryan
Caplan
Wrong hypotheses, rightly worked from, have produced more
useful results than unguided observations.
~ Augustus De Morgan
You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty ~ Sacha Guitry
You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things
happen to you. ~ Mary Tyler Moore
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. ~ Henry Ford
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to
find it for himself. ~ Galileo
Galilei
You don't get somebody to like you by doing them a favor.
That only tends to build resentment over the fact that they are needy and you
are not. No, you ask them to do you a favor.
~ Ben Franklin
You forgive others mainly for the selfish reason of moving
on
You have enemies?
Good. That means you have stood
up for something ~ Churchill
You have the right to your own opinion, not your own facts
You need data more than theory to destroy bad theories.
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. ~ Mae West
You wouldn’t care what people think about you if you knew
how little they think about you
Your wisdom should be without pride. ~ Augustine
You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your
wings on the way down. ~ Ray
Bradbury
The principle difference between heaven and hell is the
company you keep there. ~ Lois Bujold
People have a hard time with things that are too
complicated, and things that are too simple
