A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will.

The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.

The Germans made just about every bad investment you could have made in the last 10 years. They invested in Icelandic banks. They invested in Greek government bonds. They were heavy into Irish banks, big into Irish banks, and they bought U.S. subprime mortgage bonds.

People in the voting booth are not purely rational creatures any more than they're purely rational creatures outside the voting booth.

In their leaders, advisers, and experts, people much prefer overconfidence, total certainty, to any kind of doubt.

I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going.

The only thing history teaches us, a wise man once said, is that history doesn’t teach us anything.