Same as Ever Quotes

“to base predictions on how people behave rather than on specific events. Predicting what the world will look like fifty years from now is impossible. But predicting that people will still respond to greed, fear, opportunity, exploitation, risk, uncertainty, tribal affiliations, and social persuasion in the same way is a bet I’d take.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“It’s a wild thing to contemplate, and it leads to the question: What would be true in every imaginable version of your life, not just this one? Those universal truths are obviously the most important things to focus on, because they don’t rely on chance, luck, or accident.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“Most things have a natural size and speed and backfire quickly when you push them beyond that.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“a man by applying himself, by using the talents he has, by acquiring the necessary skills, can rise from lower to higher status, and that his family can rise with him,”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“Morgan Housel is a partner at The Collaborative Fund.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“Same thing here: The most important variable was the stories people told themselves.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“No matter what the world looks like today, and what seems obvious today, everything can change tomorrow because of some tiny accident no one's thinking about.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“Historian Michael Howard has said that war and welfare go hand in hand.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“It’s uncomfortable to think that what you haven’t experienced might change what you believe, because it’s admitting your own ignorance.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions,”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“This is one of the most useful life skills—enduring the pain when necessary rather than assuming there’s a hack, or a shortcut, around it.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“A tree that grows quickly rots quickly and therefore never has a chance to grow old,”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“calm plants the seeds of crazy.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“the market historically crashes every five to seven years.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“You think you want progress, both for yourself and for the world. But most of the time that’s not actually what you want. You want to feel a gap between what you expected and what actually happened.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“marriage: It only works when both people want to help their spouse while expecting nothing in return. If you both do that, you’re both pleasantly surprised.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“The idea that what you don’t see might refute everything you believe just doesn’t occur to us.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes

“Complexity gives a comforting impression of control, while simplicity is hard to distinguish from cluelessness.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“A long time horizon with a firm end date can be as reliant on chance as a short time horizon. Far superior is flexibility.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“A lot of people can resist financial incentives; cultural and tribal incentives are more seductive.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“It’s good to always assume the world will break about once per decade, because historically it has. The breakages feel like low-probability events, so it’s common to think they won’t keep happening. But they do, again and again, because they’re actually just smaller high-probability events compounding off one another.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“The idea of “complex to make, simple to break” is everywhere. Construction requires skilled engineers; demolition requires only a sledgehammer. Even when something doesn’t break easily, the thing that could break it is usually simpler than whatever made it.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“An important fact that explains a lot of things is that good news takes time but bad news tends to occur instantly.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“The fear, the pain, the struggle are motivators that positive feelings can never match. That’s a big takeaway from history, and it leads to a realization that will always be true: Be careful what you wish for. A carefree and stress-free life sounds wonderful only until you recognize the motivation and progress it prevents. No one cheers for hardship—nor should they—but we should recognize that it’s the most potent fuel of problem-solving, serving as both the root of what we enjoy today and the seed of opportunity for what we’ll enjoy tomorrow.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“Big, fast changes happen only when they’re forced by necessity.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“You cannot compare the incentives of Silicon Valley coders trying to get you to click on ads to Manhattan Project physicists trying to end a war that threatened the country’s existence. You can’t even compare their capabilities. The same people with the same intelligence have wildly different potential under different circumstances. And the circumstances that tend to produce the biggest innovations are those that cause people to be worried, scared, and eager to move quickly because their future depends on it.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“An important thing about this topic is that most great things in life—from love to careers to investing—gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into. But what are two of the most common tactics when people pursue something great? Trying to make it faster and bigger. It’s always been a problem, and always will be. Same as ever.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don’t, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after,” John Boyd once said.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“My guess is if COVID-19 struck the world in 1920, it would be a single page in the history books about yet another deadly pandemic wedged in between a long list of common tragedies. But since it struck in the comparative calm of 2020, it will leave a mark that reshapes how some people think about viral risk.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life

“Everything feels unprecedented when you haven’t engaged with history,” writer Kelly Hayes once wrote. It’s such an important idea.”
― Morgan Housel, Same as Ever: Timeless Lessons on Risk, Opportunity and Living a Good Life