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121 " So many problems occur when people fail to be obedient when they are supposed to be obedient, and fail to be creative when they are supposed to be creative. The "
― Michael Lewis , The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
122 " It was striking how little control we had of events, particularly in view of how assiduously we cultivated the appearance of being in charge by smoking big cigars and saying fuck all the time. "
― Michael Lewis , Liar's Poker
123 " One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks. "
― Michael Lewis , Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
124 " why they studied economics, and they’d explain that it was the most practical course of study, even while they spent their time drawing funny little graphs. "
125 " He who sees the past as surprise-free is bound to have a future full of surprises. "
126 " The guy walks around with a banana in his ear. And people are like, ‘Why do you have a banana in your ear?’ He says, ‘To keep the alligators away! There are no alligators! See? "
127 " They actually spent time wondering how people who had been so sensationally right (i.e., they themselves) could preserve the capacity for diffidence and doubt and uncertainty that had enabled them to be right. The more sure you were of yourself and your judgment, the harder it was to find opportunities premised on the notion that you were, in the end, probably wrong. The "
― Michael Lewis , The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
128 " Someone once said that education was knowing what to do when you don’t know, "
129 " On its surface, the booming market in side bets on subprime mortgage bonds seemed to be the financial equivalent of fantasy football: a benign, if silly, facsimile of investing. Alas, there was a difference between fantasy football and fantasy finance: When a fantasy football player drafts Peyton Manning to be on his team, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning. When Mike Burry bought a credit default swap based on a Long Beach Savings subprime–backed bond, he enabled Goldman Sachs to create another bond identical to the original in every respect but one: There were no actual home loans or home buyers. Only the gains and losses from the side bet on the bonds were real. "
130 " After the war Avi, by then twenty-two years old, finally decided what he would study: psychology. Had you asked him just then why he picked psychology, “I would say I want to understand the human soul. Not the mind. The soul. "
131 " The entire health industry lies about what things cost to make,” she said. “I know what things cost because I made them. "
― Michael Lewis , The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy
132 " The method of his execution was unsurprising: Trump always avoided firing people himself. The man who played Mr. You’re Fired on TV avoided personal confrontation in real life. "
133 " The astute investor Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the market. "
134 " Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, which, upon inspection, proved to be a Washington, DC, propaganda machine funded with millions of dollars from ExxonMobil and Koch Industries. Pyle himself had served as a Koch Industries lobbyist and ran a business on the side writing editorials attacking the DOE’s attempts to reduce the dependence of the American economy on carbon. "
135 " the knowledge that is never created, because you have ceased to lay the groundwork for it. "
136 " Trump’s budget, like the social forces behind it, is powered by a perverse desire—to remain ignorant. "
137 " There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. "
138 " Corporate finance, which services the corporations and governments that borrow money, and that are known as “clients,” is, by comparison, a refined and unworldly place. Because they don’t risk money, corporate financiers are considered wimps by traders. "
139 " Walking through the ruins, she saw all over again what she had seen so many times: how much better Americans were at responding to a disaster than preventing it. "
140 " By changing the context in which two things are compared, you submerge certain features and force others to the surface. "