The longer-term the option, the sillier the results generated by the Black-Scholes option pricing model, and the greater the opportunity for people who didn't use it.

Baseball is this intense subculture that actually doesn't speak very much for the larger culture.

The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.

As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off.

When you're trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.

In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

A banking system is an act of faith: it survives only for as long as people believe it will.

Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.

A credit default swap was confusing mainly because it wasn't really a swap at all. It was an insurance policy, typically on a corporate bond, with semiannual premium payments and a fixed term.

One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks.

People don't like uncertainty, and their minds are tools for making sense of the world, even when the world is senseless.

Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.

A peculiarity of the nature of your mind is that, in contrast to your physical constitution (dosha) that is fixed from birth, it can be altered through discrimination and choice.

Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old, their beards of icicles and snow.

Subsidies have changed the way the nation behaves.

I have always reckoned myself among the greatest admirers of Mozart, and shall do so till the day of my death.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.

In almost any society I think, the quality of the nonconformists is likely to be just as good as and no better than that of the conformists.

I may be a businessman in that I set up and run companies for profit, but when I try to plan ahead and dream up new products and new companies, I'm an idealist.

Success is about happiness and security, rather than hitting any particular sort of job or rung on the career ladder.

I hope you learn to love yourself for who you are and what you look like, and how you were born to be, because you are perfect in your own way.