Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

by Morgan Housel

“Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”

What your imagination can’t fathom is the dangerous stuff, and it’s why risk can never be mastered.

“If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

Today’s economy is good at generating three things: wealth, the ability to show off wealth, and great envy for other people’s wealth.

The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you’re going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.

“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after,” John Boyd once said.

A common trait of human behavior is the burning desire for certainty despite living in an uncertain and probabilistic world.

There is a saying that people don’t remember books; they remember sentences.

“Humor is a way to show you’re smart without bragging.”