Ray Dalio Quotes

What matters most is that the people you work with share your values.

This is my year of transition from what I'm calling the second phase of my life to the third phase of my life. And I wanted to pass it along. What I mean by that is, in the first days of your life you're dependent on others and you learn. You're basically a kid, depending on your parents. In the second phase of your life, you're working and others are dependent on you and you're trying to be successful. And then when you go to the third phase of your life it's no longer as much of a kick to be successful. There's a natural, instinctual desire to help other people be successful.

Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity.

I have been very lucky because I have had the opportunity to see what it's like to have little or no money and what it's like to have a lot of it. I'm lucky because people make such a big deal of it and, if I didn't experience both, I wouldn't be able to know how important it really is for me. I can't comment on what having a lot of money means to others, but I do know that for me, having a lot more money isn't a lot better than having enough to cover the basics.

When you're centered, your emotions are not hijacking you.

When there is pain, the animal instinct is 'fight or flight' (i.e., to either strike back or run away) - reflect instead. When you can calm yourself down, thinking about the dilemma that is causing you pain will bring you to a higher level and enlighten you, leading to progress.

Once you accept that playing the game will be uncomfortable, and you do it for a while, it will become much easier (like it does when getting fit). When you excel at it, you will find your ability to get what you want thrilling.

With the media, we don't know what's true, and we don't have radical transparency because we're seeing everything through somebody else's eyes. There's no other industry that has as much power and as much freedom and as little quality control. I can't imagine how anyone could not think that's a problem.

For every mistake that you learn from you will save thousands of similar mistakes in the future, so if you treat mistakes as learning opportunities that yield rapid improvements you should be excited by them. But if you treat them as bad things, you will make yourself and others miserable, and you won't grow.

Remember that experience creates internalization. Doing things repeatedly leads to internalization, which produces a quality of understanding that is generally vastly superior to intellectualized learning.

I think it is in the nature of individuals and individual entities not to self-correct.

I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.

I don't get caught up in the moment.

Don't be a perfectionist, because perfectionists often spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of other big, important things. Be an effective imperfectionist. Solutions that broadly work well (e.g., how people should contact each other in the event of crises) are generally better than highly specialized solutions (e.g., how each person should contact each other in the event of every conceivable crisis).

Treat your life like a game.

Everyone has to decide for themselves what works for them and their organization.

I'm sure Donald Trump will think that he has the truth, and some journalist is arguing that he has truth, and somebody else is arguing that they have the truth. And in fact it's even worse than that because they're so hell bent on their arguments that they will distort the truth consciously. They'll manipulate the facts to support their arguments because they're so hung up in the fight. That's where the problem is, so we argue all the time.

People who excel at book learning tend to call up from memory what they have learned in order to follow stored instructions. Others who are better at internalized learning use the thoughts that flow from their subconscious. The experienced skier doesn't recite instructions on how to ski and then execute them; rather, he does it well "without thinking," in the same way he breathes without thinking. Understanding these differences is essential.

Pull in your belt, spend less, and reduce debt.

If it didn't happen in your life before, then you're not paying attention you don't think it's possible. But almost all important events never happen in your life before.

I think the media argues all the time with itself.

The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I'm wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.

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.

I'd like to be clear that a number of people find me intolerable, and they don't hesitate to say so - which they and I cherish.

I don't think individual media outlets will regulate. There are such things as self-regulatory organizations that will look at the members of the industry and their behavior and establish standards of behavior.

The media has the power to create an entrenched perception of reality that's incorrect.

Principles are concepts that can be applied over and over again in similar circumstances as distinct from narrow answers to specific questions. Every game has principles that successful players master to achieve winning results. So does life. Principles are ways of successfully dealing with the laws of nature or the laws of life. Those who understand more of them and understand them well know how to interact with the world more effectively than those who know fewer of them or know them less well.

I'm scared of people with power making the decision.

In China anything less than 6% growth is a recession meaning that it also causes financial problems and it's disruptive and it's a problem.

More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don't is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively

People who confuse what they wish were true with what is really true create distorted pictures of reality that make it impossible for them to make the best choices.

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.

The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it's silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable).

There is nothing to fear from truth....Being truthful is essential to being an independent thinker and obtaining greater understanding of what is right.

I learned that everyone makes mistakes and has weaknesses and that one of the most important things that differentiates people is their approach to handling them. I learned that there is an incredible beauty to mistakes, because embedded in each mistake is a puzzle, and a gem that I could get if I solved it, i.e. a principle that I could use to reduce my mistakes in the future.

I'm scared of one man, one vote because it suggests that everybody has an equal ability at making decisions, and I think that's dangerous.

The meaningful work and the meaningful relationships are, to me, comparable rewards. I think being on a mission to do something great is great, and to be on that mission with people who you have really meaningful relationships with not only provides both types of rewards, but it's mutually supportive. Because you can have tough love, but there's also the love part of that in terms of the caring for each other, and when you have the caring you can be tougher on each other. Some people describe it as an intellectual Navy Seals.

When you're faced with a choice, you have one of three choices that you can have. You can have those with power decide. You can have one man, one vote. Or you can have believability-weighted decision-making.

An economy is not a complicated thing; it just has a lot of moving parts.

Over time, it also became important for me to share my management principles with the people I worked with because we had to agree on how we should be with each other - and that way is unique. Because the logic behind being radically honest and radically transparent with each other wasn't clear, it had to be spelled out in these principles.

I think the basic problem is that everybody thinks they know what the truth is, and sometimes they're even distorting the truth to make their arguments.

Evolution is the only thing that exists through time. That is true for computers, or people, or a business. We tend to see things in a static way, and so you see what is. Even in looking at ourselves, what we really are is essentially vessels for our DNA that keeps evolving through time. So seeing that and embracing that reality, and thinking of everything as kind of this perpetual motion machine in which you embrace reality - you don't wish it was different. You realize that it's your puzzle to interact with. You interact with it well, you evolve yourself.

I think the industry can probably self-correct without regulation, but I don't believe an individual outlet can regulate itself.

I'm going to give away a lot more than half my money. I'd be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I'm giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

To be successful, we need everyone to think independently and work through disagreement to decide what's best.

You'll see that excuses like "That's not easy" are of no value and that it pays to "push through it" at a pace you can handle. Like getting physically fit, the most important thing is that you keep moving forward at whatever pace you choose, recognizing the consequences of your actions.

We don't have ways of resolving the arguments in idea meritocratic way.