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January 25 - February 16, 2025
An irony of studying history is that we often know exactly how a story ends, but we have no idea where it began.
financial advisor Carl Richards says, “Risk is what’s left over after you think you’ve thought of everything.”
“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.”
People gauge their well-being relative to those around them, and luxuries become necessities in a remarkably short period of time when the people around you become better off.
the world isn’t driven by greed; it’s driven by envy.
There is no such thing as objective wealth—everything is relative, and mostly relative to those around you. It’s the path of least resistance to determining what life owes you and what you should expect.
Money buys happiness in the same way drugs bring pleasure: incredible if done right, dangerous if used to mask a weakness, and disastrous when no amount is enough.
people don’t really communicate on social media so much as they perform for one another.
People don’t want accuracy. They want certainty.
Stories are always more powerful than statistics.
Not the best idea, or the right idea, or the most rational idea. Just whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads is the one who tends to be rewarded.
people don’t remember books; they remember sentences.
Mark Twain said, “Humor is a way to show you’re smart without bragging.”
“Great books are wine,” Twain said, “but my books are water. But everybody drinks water.”
“New ways of looking at things create much greater innovation than new ways of doing them.”
Historian Will Durant once said, “Logic is an invention of man and may be ignored by the universe.” And it often is, which can drive you mad if you expect the world to work in rational ways.
Attempting to distill emotional and hormonal humans into a math equation is the cause of so much frustration and surprise in the world.
“The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces.” It’s what causes us to overlook that the world is not one big spreadsheet whose outputs can be computed.
An important fact that explains a lot of things is that good news takes time but bad news tends to occur instantly.
Warren Buffett says it takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy one.
Yuval Noah Harari writes: “To enjoy peace, we need almost everyone to make good choices. By contrast, a poor choice by just one side can lead to war.”
A lot of progress and good news concerns things that didn’t happen, whereas virtually all bad news is about what did occur.
The best financial plan is to save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist.
That’s the balance—planning like a pessimist and dreaming like an optimist.
you can only be an optimist in the long run if you’re pessimistic enough to survive the short run.
“The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.”
The most dominant creatures tend to be huge, but the most enduring tend to be smaller.
“The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit,”
“People follow incentives, not advice.”
Jim Carrey once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”
Patience is often stubbornness in disguise.
Wounds heal, but scars last.
