Words of Wisdom

The sea gets deeper as you go further into it, according to a Venetian proverb.

Not seeing a tsunami or an economic event coming is excusable; building something fragile to them is not.

There are ample empirical findings to the effect that providing someone with a random numerical forecast increases his risk taking, even if the person knows the projections are random.

A very rarely discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities?Xeven in moderate quantities.

Using my ecological reasoning, someone who procrastinates is not irrational; it is his environment that is irrational. And the psychologist or economist calling him irrational is the one who is beyond irrational.

The longer one goes without a market trauma, the worse the damage when commotion occurs.

When a currency never varies, a slight, very slight move makes people believe that the world is ending. Injecting some confusion stabilizes the system.

Someone who did not find something is providing others with knowledge, the best knowledge, that of absence (what does not work)?Xyet he gets little or no credit for it. He is a central part of the process with incentives going to others and, what is worse, gets no respect.

What does not kill me makes me stronger. ~ Nietzsche

Both your failures and your successes will give you information.

Every plane crash brings us closer to safety, improves the system, and makes the next flight safer?Xthose who perish contribute to the overall safety of others.

Had the Titanic not had that famous accident, as fatal as it was, we would have kept building larger and larger ocean liners and the next disaster would have been even more tragic.

If every trial provides you with information about what does not work, you start zooming in on a solution?Xso every attempt becomes more valuable, more like an expense than an error.

The harder you try to harm bacteria, the stronger the survivors will be?Xunless you can man- age to eradicate them completely.

Life always gives us something to smile about.

If you walk on uneven, not man-made terrain, no two steps will ever be identical?Xcompare that to the randomness-free gym machine offering the exact opposite: forcing you into endless repetitions of the very same movement.

All the wealth of the world can??t buy a liquid more pleasurable than water after intense thirst.

If I could predict what my day would exactly look like, I would feel a little bit dead.

Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.

Try it out with the following experiment in spreading gossip: tell someone a secret and qualify it by insisting that it is a secret, begging your listener ??not to tell anyone??; the more you insist that it remain a secret, the more it will spread.

Psychologists have shown the irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.

The noise produced by the person is inverse to the pecking order.

Most humans manage to squander their free time, as free time makes them dysfunctional, lazy, and unmotivated?Xthe busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.

It is a well-known trick that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office.

The world as a whole has never been richer, and it has never been more heavily in debt, living off borrowed money. The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.

You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. ~ Steve Jobs

There are only two possibilities why you\'re disappointed: wrong person or wrong expectation.

Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.

How you think about a problem is more important than the problem itself-so always think positively. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

If you??re not confused, you??re not paying attention. ~ Tom Peters