Morgan Housel Quotes

There is the old pilot quip that their jobs are “hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

There are two types of information: permanent and expiring. Permanent information is: “How do people behave when they encounter a risk they hadn’t fathomed?” Expiring information is: “How much profit did Microsoft earn in the second quarter of 2005?” Expiring knowledge catches more attention than it should, for two reasons. One, there’s a lot of it, eager to keep our short attention spans occupied. Two, we chase it down, anxious to squeeze insight out of it before it loses relevance. Permanent information is harder to notice because it’s buried in books rather than blasted in headlines. But its benefit is huge. It’s not just that permanent information never expires, letting you accumulate it. It also compounds over time, leveraging off what you’ve already learned. Expiring information tells you what happened; permanent information tells you why something happened and is likely to happen again. That “why” can translate and interact with stuff you know about other topics, which is where the compounding comes in.

To grasp why people bury themselves in debt, you don’t need to study interest rate: you need to sturdy the history of greed , insecurity and optimism.

The correct lesson to learn from surprises is that the world is surprising. Not that we should use past surprises as a guide to future boundaries; that we should use past surprises as an admission that we have no idea what might happen next.

The customer is always right” and “customers don’t know what they want” are both accepted business wisdom. The line between “inspiringly bold” and “foolishly reckless” can be a millimeter thick and only visible with hindsight.

"As investor Michael Batnick says, "some lessons have to be experienced before they can be understood." We are all victims, in different ways, to that truth."

Be nicer and less flashy. No one is impressed with your possessions as much as you are. You might think you want a fancy car or a nice watch. But what you probably want is respect and admiration. And you’re more likely to gain those things through kindness and humility than horsepower and chrome.

You might think you want an expensive car, a fancy watch, and a huge house. But I’m telling you, you don’t. What you want is respect and admiration from other people, and you think having expensive stuff will bring it. It almost never does — especially from the people you want to respect and admire you.

The challenge for us is that no amount of studying or open-mindedness can genuinely recreate the power of fear and uncertainty. I can read about what it was like to lose everything during the Great Depression. But I don’t have the emotional scars of those who actually experienced it. And the person who lived through it can’t fathom why someone like me could come across as complacent about things like owning stocks. We see the world through a different lens.

Realizing the future might not look anything like the past is a special kind of skill that is not generally looked highly upon by the financial forecasting community.

An important thing about this topic is that most great things in life — from love to careers to investing — gain their value from two things: patience and scarcity. Patience to let something grow, and scarcity to admire what it grows into. But what are two of the most common tactics when people pursue something great? Trying to make it faster and bigger. It’s always been a problem, and always will be. Same as ever.

Everyone has their own unique experience with how the world works.

Just like evolution, the key is realizing that the more perfect you try to become, the more vulnerable you generally are.

Intelligence is not a reliable advantage in a world that’s become as connected as ours has. But flexibility is.

want you to be successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when judging people, including yourself.