At SGI board meetings... Jim Clark's face would get red and he'd start shouting that an investor and board member had cheated him and his engineers.

Baseball is this intense subculture that actually doesn't speak very much for the larger culture.

The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.

As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off.

When you're trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.

In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will.

Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.

A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn't really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on a corporate bond, with semiannual premium payments and a fixed term.

One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks.

People don't like uncertainty, and their minds are tools for making sense of the world, even when the world is senseless.

There is no problem to relish pride when people praises you but at the same time, one must also be of the opinion that ‘this should not be so’.

You must be a light unto yourself.

Death of destiny: dust

If people are suffering then they must look within themselves. ... Happiness is not something ready-made [Buddha] can give you. It comes from your own actions.

The student of politics therefore as well as the psychologist must study the nature of the soul.

When you cast doubt on some bodily function- you don't know how sensitive the body is to that kind of idea.

Negative people often tend to create negative cultures whereas positive corporate cultures are created by positive people.

At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.

The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God.

We must be governed by the force of law, not by the law of force.