The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

Anything organic requires some dose of variability so it can adapt all the time, and fixing things is not a good idea.

Also, it's good to have more than one profession, in case your own profession goes out of style. A Wall Street trader who's also a belly dancer will do a lot better than a trader who winds up driving a taxi.

We tend to use knowledge as therapy.

People are much less interested in what you are trying to show them than what you are trying to hide.

If you let markets - in general, my belief is that if you let markets give you information, they'll give you the information rather than artificially prop up everything.

If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.