James Surowiecki Quotes

Wall Street has come a long way from the insider-dominated world that was blown apart by the Great Depression.

Meeting external deadlines is much harder than meeting internal ones. On the other hand, internal deadlines sometimes don't feel real, and are therefore easy to evade.

Traditionally, tours were a means of promoting a record. Today, the record promotes the tour.

The stock market has an insidious effect on C.E.O.s' moods, because of its impact not just on their companies but on their own bank accounts.

All things being equal, letting people make decisions for themselves will produce smarter outcomes, collectively, than relying on government planners.

Standards wars involve lots of variables, and understanding them often seems more an art than a science. They generally involve just two big players, and end in a winner-take-all situation.

Technological innovation has dramatically lowered the cost of computing, making it possible for large numbers of consumers to own powerful new technologies at reasonably low prices.

The oil market is especially sensitive even to a hint of expansion or contraction in supply.

There does seem to be some evidence that as people get older, they procrastinate less, perhaps because they feel the pressure of time more.

I tend to delay writing by doing more research - it's really the act of writing the piece that I have the hardest time with.

Sometimes even a smart crowd will make a mistake.

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

Framing effects can be very influential, and to the degree that you can think of a task as close rather than distant, you're more likely to actually get it done.

We assume that good-looking people are smarter and more effective than they really are, and that homely people are the reverse.

A long-term crisis, after a certain point, no longer seems like a crisis. It seems like the way things are.

One of the problems that exacerbates procrastination is the feeling that you have lots of different things to do and no clear sense of which matter more, when they should be done, etc.

Of course, politicians always say they're just describing their opponents' positions, even if they are in fact offering absurd caricatures, if not outright lies.

The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization's benefits.

You might think of consumption as a fairly passive activity, but buying new products and services is actually pretty risky, at least if you value your time and money.

Tough times have always lent themselves to nativist sentiments and closed-door policies. But in the case of highly skilled immigrants these policies are a recipe for stagnation.

One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

In part because individual judgement is not accurate enough or consistent enough, cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making.

The problem is that groups are only smart when the people in them are as independent as possible. This is the paradox of the wisdom of crowds.

Congressional Republicans themselves have vehemently defended the idea that preexisting conditions should not be used to deny people insurance.

Defense contractors are able to reap tremendous profits while rarely confronting the risks for which those profits are supposed to be the reward.

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

In American politics, 'Europe' is usually a code word for 'big government.'

In confusing stock options with ownership, corporations confuse trappings with substance.

Of course, plenty of people don't think that guaranteeing affordable health insurance is a core responsibility of government.

Of course, presidents are always blamed or rewarded for the state of the economy.

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

What the investment community does like is short-term measures designed to boost share prices.

Companies often become victims of their own mythologies.

Companies, like people, don't much like to change.

The typical American corporation is a shareholders' republic the same way that China is a peoples' republic.

Corporate welfare isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The U.S. is excellent at importing cheap products from the rest of the world. Let's try importing some human capital instead.

Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.

Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial.

The business of America shouldn't be subsidizing business.

The challenge for capitalism is that the things that breed trust also breed the environment for fraud.