Simon > Simon's Quotes

“The astute investor Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the market.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“Why did investment banking pay so many people with so little experience so much money? Answer: When attached to a telephone, they could produce even more money. How could they produce money without experience? Answer: Producing in an investment bank was less a matter of skill and more a matter of intangibles—flair, persistence, and luck.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“Best of all, he gave us a rule of thumb about information in the markets that I later found useful: “Those who say don’t know, and those who know don’t say.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“In the stock market the more elaborate and abstruse the mathematics the more uncertain and speculative the conclusion we draw therefrom….”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but only a few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion. —Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“The markets in the long run are no doubt driven by fundamental economic laws—if the United States runs a persistent trade deficit, the dollar will eventually plummet—but in the short run money flows less rationally. Fear and, to a lesser extent, greed are what make money move.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. —Sun-tzu”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“A man who can tell a good story can make a good living as a broker.”
― Michael Lewis, Liar's Poker

“For economists, Argentina is a perplexing country. To illustrate how difficult it was to understand Argentina, the Nobel Prize–winning economist Simon Kuznets once famously remarked that there were four sorts of countries: developed, underdeveloped, Japan, and Argentina.”
― Daron Acemoğlu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

“it is amazing what you can accomplish when you do it in a "take no prisoners" manner.”
― Ethan M. Rasiel, McKinsey Mind

“At its root, Scrum is based on a simple idea: whenever you start a project, why not regularly check in, see if what you’re doing is heading in the right direction, and if it’s actually what people want? And question whether there are any ways to improve how you’re doing what you’re doing, any ways of doing it better and faster, and what might be keeping you from doing that.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Making people prioritize by value forces them to produce that 20 percent first. Often by the time they’re done, they realize they don’t really need the other 80 percent, or that what seemed important at the outset actually isn’t.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Often when people talk about great teams, they only talk about that transcendent sense of purpose.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“Often when people talk about great teams, they only talk about that transcendent sense of purpose. But while that’s a critical element, it’s only one leg of the three-legged stool. Just as critical, but perhaps less celebrated, is the freedom to do your job in the way that you think best—to have autonomy. On all great teams, it’s left to the members to decide how to carry out the goals set by those leading the organization.”
― Jeff Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

“I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do. —Charlie Munger[6]”
― Shane Parrish, The Great Mental Models, Volume 1: General Thinking Concepts

“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!”
― Sylvester Stallone, Rocky Balboa

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein