Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily.

How you behave in one place, will help in surprising ways later.

A different set of incentives from rising in an economic establishment where the rewards system, again, the reinforcement, comes from being a truffle hound. That's what Jacob Viner, the great economist called it: the truffle hound - an animal so bred and trained for one narrow purpose that he wasn't much good at anything else, and that is the reward system in a lot of academic departments.

It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.

Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.

If we've been a little more successful than other people, is because we always realised that the school of life was always open, and if you were not learning more you are falling behind.

I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don't believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody's that smart.