One big advantage Google has over Microsoft when they were having the paradigm shifted out from under them is not being run by Steve Ballmer. - Paul Graham

But it was not till the Industrial Revolution that wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to get rich. In England, at least, corruption only became unfashionable (and in fact only started to be called “corruption”) when there started to be other, faster ways to get rich.

There is nothing more powerful than well-informed optimism. It has to be well-informed though. The "everything will be fine" type of optimism may also be somewhat useful, but it's not as useful as the "Hmm, what if we tried x?" kind.

Experienced and inexperienced investors both lead you on, but for different reasons. Inexperienced ones get excited, then get cold feet, and the result is as if they were leading you on. Whereas experienced but unscrupulous investors deliberately act more excited than they are.