“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.”

When two intelligent parties disagree, that’s when the potential for learning and moving ahead begins.

I believe that dreamers who simply imagine things that would be nice but are not possible don’t sufficiently appreciate the laws of the universe to understand the true implications of their desires, much less how to achieve them.

Radical transparency fosters goodness in so many ways for the same reasons that bad things are more likely to take place behind closed doors.

The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.

Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it’s a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.

Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.

People who worry about looking good typically hide what they don’t know and hide their weaknesses, so they never learn how to properly deal with them and these weaknesses remain impediments in the future.

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.

Forget about what the technology is. Just understand the motivation behind it.

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

I could see that making judgments about people so that they are tried and sentenced in your head, without asking them for their perspective, is both unethical and unproductive. So I learned to love real integrity and to despise the lack of it.

Successful people ask for the criticism of others and consider its merit.

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

Since the only way you are going to find solutions to painful problems is by thinking deeply about them – i.e., reflecting – if you can develop a knee-jerk reaction to pain that is to reflect rather than to fight or flee, it will lead to your rapid learning/evolving.

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

There is slow growth, but it is positive slow growth. At the same time, ratios of debt-to-incomes go down. That’s a beautiful deleveraging.

In adversity assume the countenance of prosperity, and in prosperity moderate the temper and desires.

I don’t pretend there aren’t biological differences, but I don’t believe the desire for leadership is hardwired biology, not the desire to win or excel. I believe that it’s socialization, that we’re socializing our daughters to nurture and our boys to lead.

Since my return to America my Master, has at the desire of my friends in England given me my freedom.

The desire to please those we admire and respect often cripples conscience.

The universe is ours to expand. No more living in the shadows of our potential and the things we desire.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.