In their leaders, advisers, and experts, people much prefer overconfidence, total certainty, to any kind of doubt.

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.

Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff didn't like the word 'horror'. They, like I, went for the French description: 'the theatre of the fantastique'.

You have all the power you could possibly need to create a new reality - a reality of vibrant health and wellbeing.

You can't run a business or anything else on a theory.

My life is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius

Every night I pray to God: 'Please, no more wack MC's.'

I suppose the one quality in an astronaut more powerful than any other is curiosity. They have to get some place nobody's ever been.

I've been driving since I was 19 years old.

You know sometimes words have two meanings.

I think a lot of times dreams are nothing more than a kind of mental or spiritual flatulence. They're a way of relieving pressure.