You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.

I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.

Make sure that you are in a situation where the constant mistakes are small and can be used for something.

A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe.

At no point in history have so many non-risk-takers, that is, those with no personal exposure, exerted so much control.

If I ask you to write down the last 4 digits of your social security number, and then take you out to lunch and ask you how many dentists there are in Manhattan, there's going to be a high correlation between those two numbers. What happens is that the number psychologically makes you feel confident.

There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.