When growth is slower than expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher than expected, bonds go down. When inflation's lower than expected, bonds go up.

The expression I use: Pain + Reality = Progress. Whenever I would have a painful mistake, I started to view that as puzzles that would give me gems if I could solve the puzzle. So, it made me thoughtful - what should I do differently next time? That was the puzzle. And the gem was some principle for handling the same thing when it came along again, and then I would write it down. And by writing it down and referring to it, and also being able to show it to other people so that we could agree that that was a good way of handling that thing - that was very, very powerful.

Radical transparency is critical to having an idea meritocracy because it shows what's actually happening without spin and prevents people from maneuvering politically behind each others' backs. It brings problems and weaknesses to the surface and allows people to see how they are dealt with, so it's great for training people on how to deal with real problems.

Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.

There is an excellent correlation between giving society what it wants and making money, and almost no correlation between the desire to make money and how much money one makes.

I don't think there is such a thing as the perfect system.

I'm just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.