The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.

Financial institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks-when one fails, they all fall. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur... I shiver at the thought.

Realism is punishing. Probabilistic skepticism is worse.

Restaurants get you in with food to sell you liquor; religions get you in with belief to sell you rules.

In the United States large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation’s funeral at our expense.

Success is becoming in middle adulthood what you dreamed to be in late childhood.

The number of managers with great track records in a given market depends far more on the number of people who started in the investment business (in place of going to dental school), rather than on their ability to produce profits.