Morgan Housel Quotes

Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.

The hardest financial skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving.

Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong. Because it’s never as good or as bad as it looks. The world is big and complex. Luck and risk are both real and hard to identify. Do so when judging both yourself and others. Respect the power of luck and risk and you’ll have a better chance of focusing on things you can actually control. You’ll also have a better chance of finding the right role models.

Optimism sounds like a sales pitch. Pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you.

Doing well with money has a little to do with how smart you are and a lot to do with how you behave.

Tell a five-year-old boy he should be a lawyer instead of a tractor driver and he will disagree with every cell in his body.

The correct lesson to learn from surprises is that the world is surprising.

I’ve been banging away at this thing for 30 years. I think the simple math is, some projects work and some don’t. There’s no reason to belabor either one. Just get on to the next.

Invest in preparedness, not in prediction.

Simplicity is the hallmark of truth — we should know better, but complexity continues to have a morbid attraction. When you give an academic audience a lecture that is crystal clear from alpha to omega, your audience feels cheated. . . . The sore truth is that complexity sells better.

Seinfeld asked if McKinsey is funny. No, the magazine said. “Then I don’t need them,” he said. “If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it — every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting.” If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. That is so counterintuitive. But I think it perfectly highlights the danger of shortcuts.

Things that have never happened before happen all the time.

True success is exiting some rat race to modulate one’s activities for peace of mind.” I like that.

A good definition of an investing genius is the man or woman who can do the average thing when all those around them are going crazy. Tails drive everything.

Your personal experiences with money make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world, but maybe 80% of how you think the world works.