George Soros Quotes

If the cognitive function operated in isolation, without any interference from the manipulative function, it could produce knowledge. Knowledge is represented by true statements. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts. But if the manipulative function is at work, the facts no longer serve as an independent criterion of truth.

Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality — but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts.

The main difference between me and other people who have amassed this kind of money is that I am primarily interested in ideas, and I don't have much personal use for money. But I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn't made money: My ideas would not have gotten much play.

Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback came in India, where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir – a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship.

Steve Kroft: You're a Hungarian Jew who escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Christian. And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.
George Soros: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.
Steve Kroft: In what way?
George Soros: That one should think ahead. One should understand and anticipate events and when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a very personal experience of evil.
Steve Kroft: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson. Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews. I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?
George Soros: Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't see the connection, but it created no problem at all.
Steve Kroft: No feeling of guilt? For example, "I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there." None of that?
George Soros: Well, of course I could be on the other side, or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was—well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets: that if I weren't there—of course, I wasn't doing it—somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator. The property was being taken away. So I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.

I had a very interesting experience with P.C.Chatterjee, one of my investment advisors. His concept was to look at technology companies as asset-rich companies, where the customer was treated as an asset. If a company had a strong customer base, it could be worth a lot even though it had a lousy management and a lack of products.
And he felt that with a little push, these values could be unlocked. It proved to be a valid concept.

A teljesség kedvéért meg kell említenem, hogy az emberi bizonytalansági elven alapuló teóriák szintén hibásak, különben érvénytelenítenék magát az elvet. A teória lényegéből fakadó hiba az, hogy nem eredményez határozott előfeltevéseket. Ami a determinista teóriáknál mégis közelebb hozza ezeket az elveket a valóság megjelenítéséhez, az nem más, mint a hibás állításoktól való távolságtartás, valamint a nyitottság a gyakorlat tükrében való módosításokra. A nyílt társadalmak nyitottabbak a fejlesztésekre, mint a zárt társadalmak.

Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world.

I consider Xi Jinping the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world.

I have devoted half my fortune and most of my energies in the last 15 years to promoting the values of democracy and open society all over the world, especially in the former Soviet Empire. After 9/11 I came to feel that those principles need to be defended at home.

This is the most important election of my lifetime. I have never been heavily involved in partisan politics but these are not normal times. President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values. That is why I am publishing this message. I have been demonized by the Bush campaign but I hope you will give me a hearing.

Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.

"The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, "The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."
The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it."

The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.