Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order Quotes

“strong education and competitiveness.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“throughout my life, the dollar has been the world's reserve currency, monetary policy has been an effective tool for stimulating economies, and democracy and capitalism have been widely regarded as the superior political and economic system. Anyone who studies history can see that no system of government, no economic system, no currency, and no empire lasts forever, yet almost everyone in surprised and ruined when they fail.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“It remains a matter of conjecture whether that is because Yongle’s military and naval expeditions were expensive or because the emperors believed that they had all they needed within China so there was no need for this exploration.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“While these strengths did not bring about immediate prosperity, over time the British system’s respect for the rule of law, combined with strong education, gave it the foundation to gain competitive advantages in commerce and innovations that followed and led to the rise of the British Empire.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“In US, Japanese, Chinese, and European bonds you could have to wait roughly 45 years, 150 years, and 30 years9 respectively to get your money back (likely getting low or nil nominal returns) and in Europe at the time of this writing you would likely never get your money back given negative nominal interest rates.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“All markets are primarily driven by just four determinants: growth, inflation, risk premiums, and discount rates.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“Over time they typically evolve from being idealistic intellectuals wanting to change the system to be fairer to brutal revolutionaries bent on winning at all costs.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“the two things about war that one can be most confident in are 1) that it won’t go as planned and 2) that it will be far worse than imagined.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“the lesson from history that comes through most loudly and most clearly is that skilled collaborations to produce productive win-win relationships to both grow and divide the pie well, so that most people are happy, are much more rewarding and much less painful than fighting civil wars over wealth and power that lead to one side subjugating the other side.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“The biggest risk to democracies is that they produce such fragmented and antagonistic decision making that they can be ineffective, which leads to bad results, which leads to revolutions led by populist autocrats who represent large segments of the population who want to have a strong, capable leader get control of the chaos and make the country work well for them.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“What a society spends money on matters. When it spends on investment items that yield productivity and income gains, it makes for a better future than when it spends on consumption items that don’t raise productivity and income.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“Stage 1, when the new order begins and the new leadership consolidates power, which leads to… … Stage 2, when the resource-allocation systems and government bureaucracies are built and refined, which if done well leads to… … Stage 3, when there is peace and prosperity, which leads to… … Stage 4, when there are great excesses in spending and debt and the widening of wealth and political gaps, which leads to… … Stage 5, when there are very bad financial conditions and intense conflict, which leads to… … Stage 6, when there are civil wars/revolutions, which leads to… … Stage 1, which leads to Stage 2, etc., with the whole cycle happening over again. Each stage presents a different”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“Money is a medium of exchange that can also be used as a storehold of wealth.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“the ability to make money, save it, and put it into capital (i.e., capitalism) is an effective motivator of people and allocator of resources that raises people’s living standards. But capitalism is also a source of wealth and opportunity gaps that are unfair, can be counterproductive, are highly cyclical, and can be destabilizing. In my opinion, the greatest challenge for policy makers is to engineer a capitalist economic system that raises productivity and living standards without worsening inequities and instabilities.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“More specifically, a) politicians are motivated to prioritize the near term over the long term, b) they don’t like to face limitations and difficult financial trade-offs (e.g., choosing whether to spend on the military for defense or to spend on social programs), and c) it is politically threatening to take money away from people by taxing them. This leads to a host of political and other problems.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“This leads to political extremism that shows up as populism of the left or of the right. Those of the left seek to redistribute the wealth while those of the right seek to maintain the wealth in the hands of the rich. This is the “anti-capitalist phase,” when capitalism, capitalists, and the elites in general are blamed for the problems.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“Some people who struggled through them have even described these very difficult times as bringing about important, good things like drawing people closer together, building strength of character, learning to appreciate the basics, etc.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail

“The Nixon administration vowed not to “devalue” the dollar, but in August 1971, the US defaulted on its commitments to pay in gold, offering paper money instead.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“international law isn’t worth a hill of beans relative to power in resolving these disputes.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“Think about it this way: if you own a house and the government creates a lot of money and credit, there might be many eager buyers who would push the price of your house up. But it’s still the same house; your actual wealth hasn’t increased, just your calculated wealth.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“believe that the reason people typically miss the big moments of evolution coming at them in life is because they experience only tiny pieces of what’s happening. We are like ants preoccupied with our jobs of carrying crumbs in our very brief lifetimes instead of having a broader perspective of the big-picture patterns and cycles, the important interrelated things driving them, where we are within the cycles, and what’s likely to transpire.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“As a principle, debt eats equity. What I mean by that is that debts have to be paid above all else.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“In my opinion, the greatest challenge for policy makers is to engineer a capitalist economic system that raises productivity and living standards without worsening inequities and instabilities.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“Socialists and communists tend to focus on dividing the pie well and typically aren’t very good at increasing its size.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“The planning horizon that Chinese leaders concern themselves with is well over a century because that’s at least how long a good dynasty lasts. They understand that the typical arc of development has different multidecade phases in it, which they plan for.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“I have often been struck by how much happier less powerful people can be relative to more powerful people.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“The goal of printing money is to reduce debt burdens, so the most important thing for currencies to devalue against is debt (i.e., increase the amount of money relative to the amount of debt, to make it easier for debtors to repay).”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“Most people worry about whether their assets are going up or down; they rarely pay much attention to the value of their currency.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“By the way, spending money on investment and infrastructure rather than on consumption tends to lead to greater productivity, so investment is a good leading indicator of prosperity.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail

“Russia and Germany rank strongest on the debt burden gauge because they are the least indebted. Russia has no reserve currency status, and Germany has a fair amount because it uses the euro, now the second most important reserve currency.”
― Ray Dalio, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail