Trying to prioritize among things we're unlikely to do is pretty fruitless.

I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.

Avoid evil, particularly if they're attractive members of the opposite sex.

You'll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy most of the profitability of the two franchises. That must get down to the peculiarities of individual adjustment to market capitalism. I think you 'd have to know the people involved to fully understand what was happening.

So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.

Financial institutions make us nervous when they're trying to do well.

Where you have complexity, by nature you can have fraud and mistakes. You'll have more of that than in a company that shovels sand from a river and sells it. This will always be true of financial companies, including ones run by governments. If you want accurate numbers from financial companies, you're in the wrong world.