The main difference between me and other people who have amassed this kind of money is that I am primarily interested in ideas, and I don't have much personal use for money.
George SorosAny central bank should only be in charge of liquidity. Solvency is a matter for the treasury.
George SorosI contend that financial markets never reflect the underlying reality accurately; they always distort it in some way or another and the distortions find expression in market prices. Those distortions can, occasionally, find ways to affect the fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect.
George SorosI chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
George SorosI would be lying, however, if I claimed that I could always formulate worthwhile hypotheses on the basis of my theoretical framework. Sometimes there were no reflexive processes to be found; sometimes I failed to find them; and, what was the most painful of all, sometimes I got them wrong. One way or another, I often invested without a worthwhile hypothesis and my activities were not very different from a random walk.
George SorosAn open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.
George SorosJust as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.
George SorosMy conceptual framework, which basically emphasizes the importance of misconceptions, makes me extremely critical of my own decisions. I know that I am bound to be wrong, and therefore am more likely to correct my own mistakes.
George SorosThe laissez-faire argument relies on the same tacit appeal to perfection as does communism.
George SorosIf every rich person gave 50 percent of their wealth to charity, I would not say they should pay more taxes.
George SorosIf we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them.
George SorosThe trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition.
George SorosNo individual anonymous participant can influence the prices and therefore you really can speculate in the market without paying attention to morality. That's one of the positive features of markets. That's why they function.
George SorosThere is very little difference between speculation and investment. The only difference is basically that investments are successful speculations because if you successfully anticipate the future you make a speculative profit.
George SorosOf course, speculation will always make a crisis worse. If there is a weak point, it will expose it.
George SorosThe eurozone status quo is neither tolerable nor stable. Mainstream economists would call it an inferior equilibrium; I call it a nightmare - one that is inflicting tremendous pain and suffering that could be easily avoided if the misconceptions and taboos that sustain it were dispelled.
George SorosThe collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.
George SorosWhat works for Germany can't work for the rest of Europe: No country can run a chronic surplus without others running deficits.
George SorosWe are trying to make the world a better place, but that is not necessarily what we accomplish. Many of the problems which preoccupy us are basically insoluble.
George SorosAs a society we can't live without moral considerations. We do have to protect the public good. And markets are not designed to do that, so we need a political process.
George SorosThe financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
George SorosIf investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.
George SorosWho most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.
George SorosI commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.
George SorosA global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital.
George SorosBy creating the European Central Bank, the member states exposed their own government bonds to the risk of default. Developed countries that issue bonds in their own currency never default, because they can always print money. Their currency may depreciate, but the risk of default is absent.
George SorosThe integration of Europe was very much led by a Germany that was always willing to pay a little bit extra to reach a compromise that everybody accepted, because Germany was so eager to get European support for reunification. That was called the "farsighted vision," which created the European Union.
George SorosMerkel has realized that the euro is not working, but she cannot change the narrative she has created because that narrative has caught the imagination of the German public, and the German public has accepted it.
George SorosGlobalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states.
George SorosWe are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.
George SorosAt times of recession, running a budget deficit is highly desirable. Once the economy begins to recover, you have to balance the budget. But it will also need additional revenues. Should the government not receive them, we will all get punished with higher interest rates.
George SorosWe in the United States are very often - since we are a democracy and we have national interests, we've often made the mistake that a democracy has to adopt America's interests, and that is a contradiction because a democracy basically is people deciding what their interests are.
George SorosRegulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
George SorosThe people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.
George SorosEconomics seeks to be a science. Science is supposed to be objective and it is difficult to be scientific when the subject matter, the participant in the economic process, lacks objectivity.
George SorosThe pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions.
George SorosTaking this view, it is possible to see financial markets as a laboratory for testing hypotheses, albeit not strictly scientific ones. The truth is, successful investing is a kind of alchemy.
George Soros