“If you have the power to see things through somebody else’s eyes, it’s like going from black and white to color or two dimensions to three dimensions.”

Though how nature works is way beyond man’s ability to comprehend, I have found that observing how nature works offers innumerable lessons that can help us understand the realities that affect us.

Ask yourself whether you have earned the right to have an opinion. Opinions are easy to produce, so bad ones abound. Knowing that you don’t know something is nearly as valuable as knowing it. The worst situation is thinking you know something when you don’t.

Constantly probe the people who report to you, and encourage them to probe you.

Some people who are creative are not reliable and vice versa; some see big pictures while others see details, etc. All of them are important to have on well-orchestrated teams.

I believe that we all get rewarded and punished according to whether we operate in harmony or in conflict with nature’s laws, and that all societies will succeed or fail in the degrees that they operate consistently with these laws.

In the end, what matters most is that the people you work with share your values, so I’ve wanted people who value the meaningful work and meaningful relationships that always motivated me in building Bridgewater.

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.

Principles are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values. Principles connect your values to your actions.

Life is like a giant smorgasbord of more delicious alternatives than you can ever hope to taste. So you have to reject having some things you want in order to get other things you want more.

It all comes down to interest rates. As an investor, all you’re doing is putting up a lump-sump payment for a future cash flow.

There is giant untapped potential in disagreement, especially if the disagreement is between two or more thoughtful people.

There are two main drivers of asset class returns – inflation and growth.

He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.

If you can stare hard at your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don’t face them head on. The more difficult the problem, the more important it is that you stare at it and deal with it.

I think so many people are reactive… they see things in a short term way they’re right up against it.

Meditation helps you stay in a calm, clear-headed state so that when challenges come at you, you can deal with them like a ninja – in a calm thoughtful way. When you’re centered, your emotions are not hijacking you.

Green and black go well together, dont they?

I don’t just want to be the best black player or the best Asian player. I want to be the best golfer ever.

I look at modeling as something I’m doing for black people in general.

Good actors I’ve worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.

Some girls like to say one thing and mean another. And me being who I am, I’m very straightforward. Everything is very black and white for me. I don’t really like playing mind games.

The mere physical man is like the ant crawling on the paper, who observes black lettering and attributes its production to the pen and nothing more.

At 50, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door.

I was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.