Success and Luck Quotes

“the average number of legs in any human population is slightly less than two. So most people actually do have “more legs than average.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“As F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“Concerns about relative position are a hard fact of human nature. No biologist is surprised that they loom so large in human psychology, since relative position was always by far the best predictor of reproductive success. People who didn’t care how well they were doing in relative terms would have been ill-equipped for the competitive environments in which we evolved. Few parents, on reflection, would want their children to be stripped of positional concerns completely.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“Paul Samuelson once said, “Never underestimate the willingness of a man to believe flattering things about himself.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“As Warren Buffett once said, “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“My colleagues, they study artificial intelligence. Me? I study natural stupidity.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“Homo economicus would cheat only if he stood to benefit by enough and if the odds of being caught were sufficiently low. So the mere fact that he does not have a reputation for being a cheat tells us only that he’s been prudent.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“They like the tax because they believe, correctly, that it will stimulate much needed savings and investment. But it’s an even better policy instrument than they think.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“the effects of a decline in any one person’s after-tax income are dramatically different from those of an across-the-board decline. If you alone experience an income decline, you’re less able to buy what you want. But when everyone’s income declines simultaneously, relative purchasing power is unaffected. And it’s relative purchasing power that determines who gets things that are in short supply.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“The median real hourly wage for men in the United States is actually lower now than in the 1980s.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“In another study, the psychologist Martin Seligman and his coauthors asked people to engage in five exercises that had been shown in earlier work to boost feelings of well-being.15 One was to write and personally deliver a letter of gratitude to someone who had never been properly thanked for an earlier kindness. This step, they found, was associated with a larger and more persistent increase in happiness scores than any other of the four other exercises.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“The Music Lab findings suggest that many songs (or books or movies) that go on to become hits owe much of their success to the fact that the first people to review them just happened to like them.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“In 1980, the cost of an average American wedding, adjusted for inflation, was $11,000, a princely sum in most parts of the world even today. But by 2014, that figure had escalated to $30,000, and in Manhattan the average wedding now costs more than $76,000.1”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“*Hong Kong’s maximum tax (the “standard rate”) has normally been 15 percent, effectively capping the marginal rate at high income levels (in exchange for no personal exemptions).”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“CEO compensation at large companies grew sixfold between 1980 and 2003, roughly the same as the market-cap growth of these businesses.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy

“So even when luck has only a minor influence on performance, the most talented and hardworking of all contestants will usually be outdone by a rival who is almost as talented and hardworking but also considerably luckier.”
― Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy