You need to have a passionate interest in why things are happening. That cast of mind, kept over long periods, gradually improves your ability to focus on reality. If you don't have the cast of mind, you're destined for failure even if you have a high I.Q.

I'd say 3/4 of advertising works on pure Pavlov. Think how association, pure association, works. Take Coca-Cola company (we're the biggest share-holder). They want to be associated with every wonderful image: heroics in the Olympics, wonderful music, you name it. They don't want to be associated with presidents' funerals and so-forth.

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

It's not the bad ideas that do you in, but the good ones.

Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.

We tend to buy things - a lot of things - where we don't know exactly what will happen, but the outcome will be decent.

Economists get very uncomfortable when you talk about virtue and vice. It doesn't lend itself to a lot of columns with numbers. But I would argue that there are big virtue effects in economics. I would say that the spreading of double-entry bookkeeping by the Monk, Fra Luce de Pacioli, was a big virtue effect in economics. It made business more controllable, and it made it more honest.