“If I had to sum up my practical skills, I would use one word: survival. And operating a hedge fund utilized my training in survival to the fullest.”

Markets can influence the events that they anticipate.

I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes.

There is no point in being confident and having a small position.

America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.

If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one’s conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.

Every bubble has two components: something – some real trend, and a misconception about that trend.

I’m only rich because I know when I’m wrong.

Start by assuming the market is always wrong, so if you copy everybody else on Wall Street, you’re doomed to do poorly.

The trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition.

Political debate is more interested in manipulating the truth, than finding the truth.

Short term volatility is greatest at turning points and diminishes as a trend becomes established.

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.

Unfortunately, the more complex the system, the greater the room for error.

The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States.

Every bubble consists of a trend that can be observed in the real world and a misconception relating to that trend. The two elements interact with each other in a reflexive manner.

Increase your bets when you are confident and scale down your positions when you don’t have conviction.

We’re operating this planet like a business in liquidation.

Through knowledge we behold the world’s creation, How in his cradle first he fostered was; And judge of Nature’s cunning operation, How things she formed of a formless mass.

The whole of the developments and operations of analysis are now capable of being executed by machinery … As soon as an Analytical Engine exists, it will necessarily guide the future course of science.

My work is that of keeping every operation down (in size) so that the farmer and the man farthest down can get hold of it.

By the year 2000 we will undoubtedly have a sizable operation on the Moon, we will have achieved a manned Mars landing and it’s entirely possible we will have flown with men to the outer planets.

There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.

Think ahead. Don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.

Painting isn’t an aesthetic operation; it’s a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.