You want failures to be small and informational. Silicon Valley does very well. It knows how to use failure as a tool for improvement.

Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making.

It is much harder to become independent if you are wealthy than to become wealthy if you are independent.

History doesn't crawl; it leaps.

In economic life and history more generally, just about everything of consequence comes from black swans; ordinary events have paltry effects in the long term.

Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act - if you can't control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.