Ray Dalio Quotes

Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with “not knowing” is more important than whatever it is you do know.

Meditate. I practice Transcendental Meditation and believe that it has enhanced my open-mindedness, higher-level perspective, equanimity, and creativity. It helps slow things down so that I can act calmly even in the face of chaos, just like a ninja in a street fight. I’m not saying that you have to meditate in order to develop this perspective; I’m just passing along that it has helped me and many other people and I recommend that you seriously consider exploring it.

Since life brings both ups and downs, struggling well doesn’t just make your ups better; it makes your downs less bad.

The word “philanthropy” doesn’t sit well with me in describing what we are doing. What we are doing is helping out with what we care about because of the joy it gives us — like the joy one gets from helping a friend.

Believe it or not, your pain will fade and you will have many other opportunities ahead of you,

Close-minded people have trouble holding two thoughts simultaneously in their minds. They allow their own view to crowd out those of others.
Open-minded people can take in the thoughts of others without losing their ability to think well- they can hold two or more conflicting concepts in their mind and go back and forth between them to assess their relative merits. p197

What was most important wasn't knowing the future — it was knowing how to react appropriately to the information available at each point in time.

Because most people are more emotional than logical, they tend to overreact to short-term results; they give up and sell low when times are bad and buy too high when times are good. I find this is just as true for relationships as it is for investments — wise people stick with sound fundamentals through the ups and downs, while flighty people react emotionally to how things feel, jumping into things when they’re hot and abandoning them when they’re not.

Money is a byproduct of excellence, not a goal. Our overriding objective is excellence and constant improvement at Bridgewater. To be clear, it is not to make lots of money. The natural extension of this is not that you should be happy with little money. On the contrary — you should expect to make a lot. If we operate consistently with this philosophy we should be productive and the company should do well financially.

I urge you to be curious enough to want to understand how the people who see things differently from you came to see them that way.

Don’t pay as much attention to people’s conclusions as to the reasoning that led them to their conclusions.

Every leader must decide between 1) getting rid of liked but incapable people to achieve their goals and 2) keeping the nice but incapable people and not achieving their goals. Whether or not you can make these hard decisions is the strongest determinant of your own success

Evolution is the single greatest force in the universe; it is the only thing that is permanent and it drives everything.

Heroes inevitably experience at least one very big failure that tests whether they have the resilience to come back and fight smarter and with more determination.

The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.