RAFI's Low Vol, My Winning Lotto Ticket

Research Affiliates (RAFI) suggests that you can dominate simple low volatility portfolios by blending them with some fundamental metrics.  Specifically, value, cash-flow, dividends, and sales, combined into a 'fundamental value' metric, generates a 200 basis point return premium that can carry over into the low beta portfolio, all while generating 25% lower volatility. These are reasonable expectations.

I'm skeptical that dividends and sales add to the Sharpe ratio of this approach, but hey, at least it's four factors, not 40.  One of the bigger opportunities here is that  low volatility, is  correlated with other metrics associated with higher returns like higher cash flow, value, low probability of default, etc. That is, it's like if small cap stocks had low betas, then clearly one should merge the two factors because they both are good selection criteria.

But then, it's easy to reach too far, and much value destruction comes from trading too much, overfitting, and that's what this kind of approach encourages. So, it takes great discipline trying to improve the low volatility approach whilst not overdoing it. The 200 basis point bogey suggests RAFI has realistic expectations.

In this video, Fiefie Li (right) notes two reasons for the low volatility attractiveness.  First, Asness, Frazzini and Pedersen's leverage constrained investors. Second, her paper Agency and Institutional Investment, with Michael Brennan and Cheng on delegated investors maximizing excess (ie relative) returns.  Both papers suggests irrational rules of thumb create incentives for massive misallocations of capital, which implies selling low volatility funds should be a piece of cake.

Interestingly, Li taught at UC Irvine, the same place Harin de Silva of Analytic Investors got his PhD, and also low volatility maven Bob Haugen.  I would think this is a good place to look for personnel to help with low volatility.

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I bought a Powerball ticket for the $500MM lottery last Saturday, and was actually interviewed by a local TV crew when I bought my one ticket, and said something to the effect that $2 buys me several minutes of daydreams about buying ridiculous things (that $100k lake submarine in SkyMall magazine).  Later I discovered a better reason for my purchase. In the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, every quantum event happens. It's basically the only way many can reconcile the EPR paradox or Schrodinger's cat being alive and dead. All possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" or "universe". Therefore, after buying that ticket, I actually won the $500MM jackpot in many of those universes. Unfortunately, in this particular universe I did not win the lottery, but, I can take comfort that many of 'me' did win, and my utility function somewhere among those universes is insanely high. For some reason, I'm not enjoying that as much as I should based on the math.

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A neat paper highlights that married couples have higher divorce rates when the woman earns more than the man. Interestingly  the hypothesis the authors give for this is 'gender identity', the idea that men and women think a man works outside the home, the woman inside, and there's a cost to deviating from this norm.  They never try to motivate why men and women might think that's a good way to frame things. That strikes me as rather hollow, a patently arbitrary tradition that makes  couples seem like stupid ciphers of sociological tides.

I think it's definitely true that men like women who make money, just not more than what they do, similar to what men say about intelligence (in speed dating surveys, men like their women smart, just not smarter).  I also think women feel their man is not as dominant, and thus less masculine, when they earn more than him, related to research showing women have more orgasms with wealthier men.  In either case, this highlights people are social animals, and so they don't maximize 'absolute wealth' but rather, something more contextual, which is often highly correlated with absolute wealth.

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It was a good week in wrestling, as the US hosted a match against Russia and Iran in New York City. While the US beat Russia pretty handily, and got killed by Iran, they had different teams for each match so it's kind of hard to compare Iran vs. Russia. I'm really excited by the young US wrestlers that won, especially Dake, Taylor, and Stieber.   Also, the international wrestling body elected a new president from Serbia, and hopefully he will be more effective than the last guy, who reportedly thought that wrestling was old enough to not need lobbying at the Olympics--wrong!  The first thing he did was implement new rules, most importantly, a cumulative score for the whole match, 2 points for a takedown, and two three minute periods.

Weekly Roundup

Jon Vol sent me a little email saying he has a blog post on Taleb, and that it got picked up by a Taleb fansite, where at the bottom it is classified as "Filed Haters || Tagged Falkenstein." I'm not just a Hater, but rather, a type that can be applied to others! I wonder what our distinguishing characteristic is in their eyes?

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 “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” C S Lewis, Mere Christianity 

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 Now that wrestling is trying to get back into the Olympics, they are considering getting rid of singlets! I'd say, it's about time. Singlets simply aren't cool, and if high school kids suited up like cage-fighters I think the sport would be more popular.

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 Heritage's dismissal of Jason Richwine is pretty rich indeed. To recap, he coauthored a study critical of immigration, basically saying that the new immigrants from Mexico would receive more benefits than generate in taxes. Someone looked up his 2009 dissertation, and it had the racy title 'IQ and Immigration Policy.'

 It's truly a taboo topic, as demonstrated by his Harvard thesis adviser and famous labor economist George Borjas saying 'I have never worked on anything even remotely related to IQ, so don’t really know what to think about the relation between IQ, immigration, etc.' The NLS panel data that Borjas studies all the time has an IQ proxy (AFQT) in there that is highly powerful in regressions, and he has to know this. He also knows that the subject is not good for one's career, so I understand why he has trained his mind to not think about it, but it's surely an elephant in the room.

 Interestingly, Edward Miller writes a lot about race and IQ, which is probably why he spent his career in an academic backwater. His seminal 1977 piece Risk, Uncertain and Difference of Opinion was really the first paper giving a theory as to why risk and return are inversely correlated, and was the first person to state in a journal one should invest in low beta/volatility stocks for this reason.

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If you can read Dutch, there's a new review of my book The Missing Risk Premium out there in a CFA magazine. I can copy, paste into a translator, and get a broken English translation that is good enough.

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Weekly Roundup

If any of you are puzzled by the low inflation rate, consider that in 2005, the Fed convinced themselves that house prices weren't in a bubble because a hedonically adjusted housing price index showed little movement. Sort of like our consumer price indices.  From a Federal Reserve meeting that focused on home price appreciation circa 2005:

For example, over the four years from 2000 to 2004, the OFHEO index increased at a compound annual rate of 8.2 percent, while the constant-quality index increased at a 5.4 percent annual rate. As shown in exhibit 4, the current ratio of price over median family income derived from these two indexes is vastly different. If the OFHEO index is giving an accurate picture of what is happening to home prices, I think one could say with some confidence that prices have been bid up to unsustainable levels. However, if the constant-quality index is a better reflection of reality, home prices actually look somewhat low relative to median family income, particularly compared to the late 1970s. I believe the constant quality index provides a more accurate indication of what is happening to the price of a typical single-family home. In contrast, the OFHEO index is subject to upward biases that accumulate over time and distort ratios such as price-to-income and income-to-rents.

Clearly, that real estate adjustment wasn't helpful. Perhaps our current CPI is similarly biased? That is, if you used 1990's CPI methodology, inflation would be around 5%, and using 1980's, it would be 10% (see here). Were we wrong then, or now?
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Joseph Stiglitz has the following take-away from current events:

The big lesson that this crisis forcibly brought home—one we should have long known—is that economies are not necessarily efficient, stable or self-correcting.

Gee, that's what the latest data say? He has been saying that since he edited Samuelson's papers in 1970: markets are not efficient.  His life's work has been on that theme, as his Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem posits market failure as the norm, and his Sappington-Stiglitz theorem suggests that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization.

I've never seen him seriously address government failure, other than the stupidity of IMF personnel, who he noted were rarely top students from Harvard, Oxford, or Princeton. If he thinks second-rate Yalies have negative productivity, what about your typical bureaucrat?

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Niall Ferguson's remark that Keynes's childlessness influenced his dismissive perspective on the long run created quite a firestorm, including a rather pathetic apology that will only encourage his enemies.  I remember reading a Keynes biography around 1988 and the author's theme was that homosexuality was the key to why Keynes thought 'outside the box.'  I personally doubt his homosexuality was so tenuously related to his economics it's hardly worth much thought, though perhaps it would rise to be worthy of an aside at a luncheon.

Diversity is supposedly this great thing because various minorities have different perspectives, why demographics have systematic predilections towards various parties and issues.  It seems a matter of pure logic to accept that if  different backgrounds can generate positive attributes, some could be negative, but if you ever say that you are a bigot.

I'm not anti-gay, and sympathize with their uniquely difficult coming out issues.  Yet, I'm not sympathetic to the idea that if one asserts any negative consequence of being gay, it's homophobia. I see this as an example of the Left showing its power and making sure that issues it categorizes as taboo stay taboo.
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The latest low volatility continue to show the benefits of low volatility this year.

Any way one would make a low vol portfolio--volatility, minimum variance algorithm, beta--generates the same results. See betaarbitrage.com for the data.

Asness, Frazzini and Pedersen have an important paper countering Ronnie Shah of Dimensional's assertion that low volatility is an industry result. It isn't.

Kevin Simler has some thoughts on the economics of status.  He basically argues it's very important and omnipresent. Never mentions the effect on risk premia, though I expect he wouldn't go that far.    That is, status seeking is accepted by economists at explaining parochial things, but somehow it disappears when it comes to addressing risk premiums, or welfare analysis.

Einstein Rebuked

Interesting take on a cliche:

I once read that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I fundamentally disagree with this idea. I think that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of hope. ~Debbie Millman

As someone who does the same thing most days, often coming up with nothing, I find this interpretation a real breakthrough.
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I've been reading a lot of Jaak Panksepp who studies 'affective neuroscience', the biology of emotions like rage, fear, lust, care, panic, grief, and play.  He's famous for documenting when rats laugh via  inaudible chirps that correspond to tickling and the appropriate brain scan signatures. Lots of mammals have the same emotions humans do, which should come as no surprise to dog owners. He notes that he purpose of play is to takes us to the point of bad things happening, which explains why my kids always seem to end play with someone crying. He sees an instinct for seeking social interaction that turns on once the stronger affects (fear, lust, rage) as well as hunger are in check. It's useful to have an instinct to seek novelty and company, and it appears this is hard-wired.  If you take too much opiates, or are autistic, this instinct is stifled.
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As for the Rienhart and Rogoff brouhaha, I don't see the big deal given our total debt-to-GDP ratio is like 500% if you include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The fact that 90% isn't a hard tipping point is irrelevant, we are way past that. Further, given we have been running a Federal deficit above 5% of GDP since 2009 every year, the idea that this R and R research has caused great austerity implies a novel definition of austerity.
 ...
I'm sympathetic to Barry Schwartz's admonition that we should satisfice more as a rule: optimizing too much leads to feeling bad about alternatives that are pretty similar. A lot in life is random, so if in picking a college or career you keep wondering 'what if?' you will be less happy and it's unhelpful because generally things you chose among were pretty similar. I think it's a very interesting question how and when to constrain choices you present others: too much choice is onerous, but more choice can better fit someone's unknown preferences. Unfortunately, those skeptical of the market seem drawn to think regulation could be of big help here; I think it's far better to leave such choices to those with skin in the game and a knowledge of the customers.  That is, bureaucrats will often think more than 3 of something they don't care about is enough, because for them it is, but that's a very silly inference. The Bloggingheads discussion is below:

Weekly Roundup

Cliff Asness: An hour interview with Cliff Asness.

 It would be hard to improve upon Cliff's Big 4 Investment Principles:

1. Cheap stocks beat expensive stocks 
2. High carry beats low carry 
3. Low risk beats high risk 
4. The trend is your friend

I would just add that, 'risk' doesn't really help understand these principles, because while you can tell a risk story for #1 and #2 they generally seem characteristics more than covariances, for #3 it goes the wrong way, and #4 it doesn't really seem relevant.

Cliff also riffs on a hot new value metric, based on a paper by Robert Novy-Marx highlighting profit margin.

Sex and Envy: Tim Wadsworth at the University of Colorado Boulder finds that

 “There’s an overall increase in sense of well-being that comes with engaging in sex more frequently, but there’s also this relative aspect to it,” he said. “Having more sex makes us happy, but thinking that we are having more sex than other people makes us even happier.” 

Keeping-up-with-the-Joneses in bed. It's not much removed from my sons, whose misery is most affected by knowledge their brother can do something they can't. Wadsworth notes that regardless of the adjective--attractive, funny, smart, poor--these are only meaningful in a relative sense to peers, and so being sexually active only makes sense relative to others.

Random

The Missing Risk Premium is a quick read, but if you really have no time, here's a 120 page PowerPoint highlighting many of its main arguments.

Here's a paper in the JFE by Cao and Han finding that total variance generates lower-than-average returns, in this case, in option markets. Selling the highest volatility options generates a higher positive return over time. Clearly, this is risky, but so is buying volatility. I think this is best explained as another example of lottery ticket preferences, people love to overpay for 100-1 longshots.

Charles Gallistel argues that the essence of calculation is read-write capability, and currently neurologists have no understanding of the physical basis of memory.  His book is here.  That is, "fire together/wire together", something we do know about neuronal synapses, doesn't lead to storing sums in any obvious way, though this seems to be happening in things from bees and ants to people. Once we figure this out, I think database architecture will undergo a quantum leap in productivity, though perhaps we never will. 

My Favorite Quotes

OK, one day into blogging retirement and I'm posting, but some asked in the comments for the quote list I mentioned, which I thought I'd share.

I know I'm missing hundreds more good ones, and some here are much better than others. That is, 'moderation in all things' is highly profound. In contrast, I don't agree that "Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience", but I do think patience is really important, so I like that quote. Then there's "To generalize is to be an idiot", which I think is just wrong, but I find it fascinating that a thoughtful person thinks this is true.

Most quotes without attribution I merely forgot where I read them, or they are a paraphrase of someone, or a mishmash of several authors.  I suppose one could google them and get a hit rate of 50%.

1. You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone   ~ Hoffer
2. A beautiful proof should appear inevitable, succinct, and unexpected.   ~ Hardy
3. A child’s goal is not to be a successful adult but a successful child.    
4. A feature of government must be judged good when for a given purpose it uses the force of convention instead of physical force and its evil chances.   ~ Barzun
5. A gaffe is when a politician speaks the truth.   ~ Michael Kinsley
6. A government must be able to control the governed, then it must be able to control itself. Order plus liberty   ~ Fareed Zakaria
7. A healthy appetite for righteousness, kept in due control by good manners, is an excellent thing; but to 'hunger and thirst' after it is often merely a symptom of spiritual diabetes. Charlie D. Broad
8. A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool   ~ Moliere
9. A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.   ~ H.H. Munro
10. A man can fail, but he isn't a failure untile he blames someone else.   ~ J Paul Getty
11. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business   ~ Hoffer
12. A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk   ~ Dr. Samuel Johnson
13. A man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born   ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich
14. A man's homeland is where he prospers   ~ Aristophanes
15. A mature man lives humbly for a great cause, an immature man dies for it. 
16. A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought   ~ Hoffer
17. a passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life   ~ Eric Hoffer
18. A pathological liar is someone who tell untruths that serve no obvious purpose.    
19. A patient had a 50-50 chance of benefiting from visiting a physician as of 1910.   ~ Medicine was more like voodoo than science until the 20th Century.   ~ Abraham Flexner
20. A person’s first duty, a young person’s at any rate, is to be ambitious, and the noblest ambition is that of leaving behind something of permanent value.   ~ GH Hardy
21. A poet over 30 is pathetic   ~ H.L. Mencken
22. A Psuedo-science consists of a nomenclature by which all positive evidence as favors its doctrine is admitted, and all negative evidence is excluded.   ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes.
23. A psychotic thinks 2+2=5.  A neurotic thinks 2+2=4 and can't stand it. 
24. A scientific theory is a tool and not a creed.   ~ J.J.Thomson
25. A sense of proportion, which implies priority, is the essence of common sense; it requires the ability to compared ends, as opposed to just means.    
26. A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.   ~ Jacques Maritain
27. A spoiled child never loves his mother   ~ Sir Henry Taylor
28. A successful life doesn't require that we've done the best, but that we've done our best.   ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
29. A thing is not necessarily true because someone dies for it.   ~ Oscar Wilde
30. A true scientist is known by his confession of ignorance  ~A.O.Foster
31. A wise man proportions his belief to experience.   ~ David Hume
32. Ability is wealth    
33. Academics are the IT department of the world.   ~ Much smarter than who they serve, but lacking in the common sense needed to have a more important role.
34. Again and again, the bright thought has occurred, "if we can only define our terms, if we can only find the basic unit, if we can spot the right 'indicators', we can then measure and reason flawlessly, we shall have created one more science."   ~ Jaques Barzun
35. All anger is self-righteous anger. There are few cynical opportunists, more often ideologues and moralists.   
36. All bad art is the result of good intentions.   
37. All data are filtered, observation is necessarily 'theory-laden'.   ~ N.R. Hanson
38. All flatterers are mercenary, and all low-minded men are flatterers.   ~ Aristotle
39. All movements go too far.   ~ Bertrand Russell
40. All our advantages have complimentary negatives at some level   
41. All supporters of totalitarian despots have hated the bourgeois.  
42. All things are difficult before they are easy.   ~ Thomas Fuller
43. All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare   ~ Spinoza
44. All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed.  Next it is violently opposed. Last it is recognized as self-evident.   ~ Shopenhauer
45. Almost all inventors are extremely fond of their latest idea, to the degree that their good judgment is affected.   
46. Almost anyone can do science; almost no one can do good science.   ~ LL Larison Cudmore
47. Almost everything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important you do it.   ~ Ghandi
48. Always asking for finished products is a sure way to manage projects into failure. One needs to manage a process that involves iterations of imperfect work.
49. Always try to simplify your syntax and enrich your vocabulary   
50. An alcoholic is anyone you don't like who drinks more than you do.   ~ Dylan Thomas.
51. An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.    ~ Niels Bohr
52. An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.   ~ Oscar Wilde
53. An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows   ~ Dwight Eisenhower
54. Analytic or creative work is best done when in a somewhat lugubrious state of mind.    ~
55. And no one lies as much as the indignant do.   ~ Nietsche
56. and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music   ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
57. Animals don't think about meaning.  
58. Ants are the most selfless animals, yet they are also the most warlike and take slaves.  If you don't value your self highly, how can you value other selves highly?
59. Anxiety is the essential condition of intellectual and artistic creation.   ~ Charles Frankel
60. Any explicit, complicated process invites its circumvention.   
61. Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one.    ~ Lyndon B Johnson
62. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.   ~ Andy Finkel
63. Anybody can become angry—that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and it the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.   ~ Aristotle
64. Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall.   ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
65. Anyone can come up with very hard or very easy problems, the key is to come up with interesting yet soluble problems.   
66. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new   ~ Albert Einstein
67. Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.   ~ Gustave Faubert
68. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.   ~ Bertrand Russell
69. Arguments convincing to one group are often totally unconvincing to others.
70. Aristotle maintained that women had fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.   ~ Bertrand Russell
71. Arrive at knowledge over small streamlets, and do not plunge immediately into the ocean, since progress must go from the easier to the more difficult.   ~ Aquinas
72. Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.   ~ John Dewey
73. art is something valuable, neither anticipated nor wanted before it was created.  Science creates valuable ideas that are inevitable.   
74. As farmers and manufacturing has declined, their status has declined, and their subsidies have increased   
75. As regulations proliferate, it's impossible to enforce them all fairly. Enforcement becomes selective and capricious. Legislative micromanagement is the road to tyranny.   
76. As you age, your talents go from will, to quickness, to judgement   
77. At bottom are only two pure forms of legislation -- productive and redistributive.   ~ Richard A. Epstein
78. At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want   ~ Lao Ttzu
79. Attention implies the withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others  
80. Avoid the temptation to work so hard that there is no time left for serious thinking.   ~ Francis Crick
81. Bad ideas aren’t retracted, they are orphaned.
82. Bad perseverance is defined by excessive perseverance stemming from ignorance of the situation, economics, or overconfidence.   
83. Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.   ~ Werner von Braun
84. Because geniuses can be eccentric doesn’t imply we should elevate pettiness, boorishness, and irresponsibility with virtue  
85. Because reputation lags achievement, we should expect people to reach the zenith of their reputation well past the zenith of their productive output   ~ Richard Posner
86. Because we can drown in information, to know less about a situation is sometimes to know more    
87. Being a professional means doing your job on the days you don't feel like doing it.   ~ David Halberstam
88. Being objective doesn’t imply being neutral, in fact more the more you know the less neutral you become   
89. Better do a little well, than a great deal badly.   ~ Aristotle
90. Both the revolutionary and the creative individual are perpetual juveniles. The revolutionary does not grow up because he cannot grow, while the creative individual cannot grow up because he keeps growing   ~ Hoffer
91. Business is not like chess, but like poker, where chance and asymmetric information demand anticipation and probability analysis.  
92. By regulating action, which we can control, we indirectly regulate feelings, which we cannot 
93. Cargo Cult analysis is analysis that superficially looks like sophisticated work, but in reality is missing the essence of true analysis.   
94. Childhood is about developing friendships, interests, discipline and independence.   
95. Children have never been good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. ~James Baldwin
96. Comfort without struggle—and the sense of insecurity that motivates it—leads to self destructive decadence.
97. Commitment becomes hysterical when those who have nothing to give advocate generosity, and those who have nothing to give up preach renunciation. ~Hoffer
98. Common sense and bayes theorem suggests that given two persuasive speakers, you will find those which most agree with you as most persuasive.   
99. common sense is an intuitive grasp of reality, which takes honesty    
100. Common sense is as rare as genius.   ~ Emerson
101. Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen.   ~ Albert Einstein
102. Confused thinking … leads nowhere in particular and can be indulged indefinitely without producing any impact upon the world.   ~ Stanislav Andreski
103. Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.   ~ Nietzcshe
104. Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer. ~A Whitney Griswold
105. Courage is a readiness to risk humiliation.   ~ Nigel Dennis
106. Courage is about doing what you're afraid to do.   ~ Eddie Rickenbacker
107. Courage is grace under pressure   ~ Ernest Hemingway
108. Courage is no less a virtue because it is rarely needed
109. Courage is not demonstrated by assuming unpopular stands from the past that subsequently became popular.   
110. Courage is the most important virtue because it is the hardest.   ~ David Brooks
111. Crass self interest is often masked with pretexts such as justice and fairness and process. 
112. Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.   ~ Anna Freud
113. Creative people are often neurotic, and tend to have more anxiety, lower self-esteem and lower tolerance for stress than other individuals.  
114. Criticism is always a kind of compliment.   ~ John Maddox
115. Criticism is prejudice made plausible.   ~ H. L. Mencken
116. Cursed is everyone who places his hope in changing the nature of man Augustine
117. Data are like inkblot, you read into them your unconscious preconceptions. 
118. Death need not concern us because when we exist death does not, and when death exists we do not. Epicurus
119. Deep faith eliminates fear.   ~ Lech Walesa
120. Definition of anxiety: view the past with regret, the present with suspicion and the future with dread. 
121. Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few   ~ George Bernard Shaw
122. Democratic socialism leads away from socialism because people eventually choose nonsocialist policies.  
123. Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason   ~ Lord Philip Dormer Stanlope
124. Do not be a hair splitter in whose hands the complicated questions do not become simple, but the simple complicated.   
125. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.   ~ Bertrand Russell
126. Do unto others as you would want done to you.   ~ Golden Rule
127. Doing something important comparatively well gives meaning, because people necessarily then appreciate you.    
128. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship. 
129. Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.   ~ Mark Twain
130. Don't look at what people say, look at what they do  
131. Doubt is the essence of consciousness.  
132. Economics involves the implications of individuals making rational decisions given their constraints and sef-interest.  
133. Education is an admirable thing, but is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. ~Oscar Wilde
134. Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.   
135. Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.   ~ Albert Einstein
136. Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don’t know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.    ~ Sir William Haley
137. Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.    ~ Peter Drucker
138. Elegance and consistency are means to an end, which is out-of-sample prediction.  
139. Emphasis on models as the major difference is wrong, the main difference is in variable selection and the transformation of those variables.   
140. Empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they with least wit are the greatest babblers.   ~ Plato
141. Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.   ~ Albert Einstein
142. Errors are many, truth is unique.   ~ Peter Kapitsa
143. Ethnic pride is wrong, but so is the more common ethnic self-pity. 
144. Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under   ~ HL Mencken
145. Every hero becomes a bore at last.   ~ Emerson
146. Every man loves what he is good at.   ~ Thomas Shadwell
147. Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood.   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
148. Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world   ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
149. Every speech should contain only three main points.  All else will be forgotten. 
150. Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.   ~ Will Rogers
151. Everyone, according to the Japanese, has a hidden ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self. Such a search is regarded as being very important, since it is believed that discovery of one's ikigai brings satisfaction and meaning to life.
152. Everything ends badly ... otherwise it wouldn't end.   ~ Koglan the Bartender
153. Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case   ~ John Maynard Keynes
154. Everything is both simpler than we can imagine, and more entangled than we can conceive.   ~ Goethe
155. Everything must not always be said, for that would be folly.   ~ Montaigne
156. Excellence is rarely found, more rarely valued.   ~ Goethe
157. Experience is a dear teacher, and fools will learn from no other.   ~ Ben Franklin
158. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.   ~ Oscar Wilde
159. Experts are much better at describing, explaining, performing tasks, and problem-solving within their domains than are novices, but, with a few exceptions, are worse at forecasting than actuarial tables based on historical, statistical models.    
160. Experts not only know what works, they know what doesn’t work. This makes them bad for creativity.   
161. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored   ~ Aldous Huxley
162. Facts without theory is trivia. Theory without facts is bullshit.   
163. Facts, however, will ultimately prevail; we must therefore take care that they be not against us.   ~ Francis Bacon
164. False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, as every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.   ~ Charles Darwin
165. For creative thought, common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgment is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only act by suppressing originality.   ~ Alfred North Whitehead
166. Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.   ~ William Durant
167. Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them   ~ Suzanne Necker
168. Friends aren't soulmates, they are people you do things with.
169. From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents.  From 18 to 35 she needs good looks. From 35 to 55, good personality.  From 55 on, she needs good cash.   ~ Sophie Tucker
170. Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience   ~ Comte de Buffon
171. Give not advice without being asked, and when desired, do it briefly.   ~ George Washington
172. Given the difficulties forecasting the future, it is very useful to simply know your present condition 
173. God was invented to explain mystery. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand. Therefore I don’t think that the laws can be considered to be like God because they have been figured out   ~ Richard Feynman
174. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.   ~ Barry LePatner
175. Good models are models useful for making important decisions.   
176. Good warriors are indolent laborers   
177. Great and small suffer the same mishaps.   ~ Blaise Pascal
178. Great ideas are new, true, and important    
179. Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.   ~ H.G.Rickover
180. Great young innovators make radical simplifications that allow them to leapfrog the expert’s relative advantage in technical knowledge. Older innovators are most often praised for their wisdom and judgment.
181. Greatests crimes are of  excess rather than need   
182. Growing up is about developing friendships, interests, discipline and independence.    ~
183. Guilt is feeling bad about what you did, shame feeling bad about yourself. Choose guilt. 
184. Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling, enduring, and accomplishing.   ~ George Sheehan
185. Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.   ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
186. Have strong opinions weakly held.  They are then theories you test. 
187. Have the courage to change the things you can, the patience to accept the things you can't, and the wisdom to know the difference   ~ Serenity Prayer
188. He that loves to be flattered is worthy of the flatterer.   ~ Shakespeare
189. He who disdains the fall in infant mortality and the gradual disappearance of famines and plagues may cast the first stone upon the materialism of the economists.    ~ Ludwig Von Mises
190. He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, though to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.   ~ Aristotle
191. He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.  
192. He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.  
193. He who praises everybody, praises nobody   ~ James Boswell
194. He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave   ~ George Berkeley
195. Historical examples of the persistence of bad ideas: trial by ordeal, bleeding to cure disease, human sacrifice to appease the gods, 
196. Holding beliefs proportionate to evidence requires humility  
197. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?   ~ Sachel Paige
198. Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.   ~ Aristotle
199. I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.   ~ Abraham Maslow
200. I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure   ~ John D Rockefeller
201. I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at   ~ Wilson Mizner
202. I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.   ~ Stephen F. Roberts
203. I desire to go to Hell, not Heaven.   ~ In Hell I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, but in Heaven are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles. ~Machiavelli
204. I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.   ~ Bill Cosby
205. I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work   ~ Thomas Edison
206. I like, as a director and a spectator, simple, direct, frank films. Nothing disgusts me more than snobbism, mannerism, technical gratuity... and, most of all, intellectualism.   ~ John Ford
207. I love him who desires not too many virtues. One virtue is more of a virtue than two, because it is more of a knot for one's destiny to cling to.  
208. I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. Johnson
209. I never saw a pessimistic general win a battle.   ~ Dwight Eisenhower
210. If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.   ~ Kant
211. If all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world,   ~ Pascal
212. If an experiment comes out as expected it can be very nice, but if it can only be considered great if it is a surprise. 
213. If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.   ~ Bertrand Russell
214. If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. There is no point making a fool of yourself.   ~ WC Fields
215. If Columbus had turned back, no one would have blamed him. Of course, no one would have remembered him either.  
216. If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough   ~ Mario Andretti
217. If God is dead, everything is allowed.   ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky
218. If I asked people what they wanted, I would have given them faster horses   ~ Henry Ford
219. If life is going to exist in a universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion   ~ Doug Adams
220. If many years go by in a field in which no significant new facts come to light, the field sharpens up the opinions and gives the appearance that the problem is solved.   ~ Thomas Gold
221. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.   ~ William James
222. If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.   ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
223. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.   ~ Albert Einstein
224. If we do not discipline ourselves the world will do it for us.   ~ William Feather
225. if we expect people to take us as we are, we should expect others to also be as they are
226. If we take man as he is we make him worse, if we take man as he should be we make him what he can be   ~ Goethe
227. If you buy the why, the how is infinitely bearable   ~ Nietsche
228. If you can distinguish between good advice and bad advice, then you don’t need advice.   ~ VanRoy
229. If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker   ~ Mike McDermott
230. If you get a good wife, you will become very happy; if you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher—and that is good for every man.   ~ Aristotle
231. If you lose your temper, you’ve lost the argument.  
232. If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.   ~ Don Marquis
233. if you read a book and aren't a better person, there's no reason to have read it.   ~
234. Ignorant men raise questions that have already been answered.   ~ Goethe
235. In an adequate social order, the untalented should be able to acquire a sense of usefulness and of growth without interfering with the development of talent around them   ~ Hoffer
236. In answering an opponent, arrange your ideas, but not your words.   ~ CC Colton
237. In banking, it’s credit, spread, and volume; you can’t have all three. 
238. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.  
239. In every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out.
240. In prosperity our friends know us, in adversity we know our friends  
241. In public speech, tell jokes in threes. Start silly, get more serious.   
242. In real life, good people are interesting and bad people are dull, while in fiction it is the opposite.  
243. In science, read the newest books.  In literature, read the oldest.   ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
244. In the absence of either fear or hope, only the present moment has any reality: you do what is most amusing, or least boring, at each passing moment.  
245. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.   ~ Janvande Snepscheut
246. Include a fresh metaphor or illustration in every major presentation 
247. Indignation does not imply moral superiority   
248. Intolerant people think they are applying integrity 
249. Intuition is pattern recognition, scientific intuition results from experience with phenomena that may have followed a different pattern.  
250. Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.   ~ Jonathan Swift
251. Is does not imply ought, but it informs it. 
252. It doesn't have to be perfect to be good  
253. It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.   ~ Richard Feynman
254. It has been my experience that folks who have not vices have very few virtues Abraham Lincoln
255. It is a golden rule not to judge men by the opinions but rather by what their opinions make of them.   ~ George Lichtenberg,
256. It is a hard thing for intellectuals to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it.  To the guilt liberals feel over what they have is added fury at those who not only have more but seem to enjoy it without a necessary and concomitant sense of shame.   ~ Victor Davis Hanson
257. It is a truism to say that a good experiment is precisely that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we have to worry about its interpretation, about what it really means.   ~ Peter Medawar
258. It is always probable that something improbable will happen.   ~ Logan Bleckley
259. It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.   ~ Gertrude Stein
260. It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. ~George Bernard Shaw
261. It is difficult for people to sort out problems on the fly as failure spreads through a complex system.  
262. It is equally a mistake to hold one’s self too high, or to rate one’s self too cheap.   ~ Goethe
263. It is far better to be flexible and know how to learn, rather than trying to make sure you get it right the first time and don’t make mistakes.  
264. It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place   ~ HL Mencken
265. It is important to be accepted, more so than to have specific friends.  
266. It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense and honesty, which makes me against most of what we do.   ~ HL Menken
267. It is much better to know something about everything than to know everything about one thing.   ~ Pascal
268. It is much easier to make measurements than to know exactly what you are measuring.   ~ J.W.N.Sullivan.
269. It is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.   ~ Descartes
270. It is not good to have everything one wants   ~ Pascal
271. It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy—but he who has shown the better temper Samuel Butler
272. It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.  
273. It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.   ~ Machiavelli
274. It is one of the blesings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them   ~ Emerson
275. It once took 90% of our population to grow our food. Now it takes 3%. Are we worse off because of the job losses in agriculture?  
276. It takes years of training it ignore the obvious.
277. It’s always tempting to do good at someone else’s expense   ~ Bastiat
278. It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.   ~ Vince Lombardi
279. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most   
280. It's good to have dreams, but not illusions.  
281. It's not what you have done, but the life you lead. Karma exists 
282. I've never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.   ~ Josh Billings
283. Just as flattery of a friend can pervert, so the insult of an enemy can sometimes correct.   ~ Augustine
284. Justice is Equality…but equality of what?   ~ Book 3, Aristotle's Politics
285. Justification is objective, motivation is subjective. 
286. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
287. Keys to a convincing theory: simple enough to be apprehended without much strain but convoluted enough to require a caste of interpreters. 
288. Kids don’t need encouragement thinking they understand things they have only the vaguest understanding of. 
289. Kids gossip more in part because they expect more from their friends, and thus experience many petty betrayals that they have to talk about.
290. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom   ~ Herman Hesse
291. Knowledge has to be sucked into the brain, not pushed into it   ~ Victor F. Weisskop
292. Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject itself, or know where to find it.   ~ Johnson
293. Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness   ~ Santayana
294. Laws are silent in time of war.   ~ Cicero
295. Laymen feel that facts are easy and theory is difficult.  It is often the other way around.
296. Less is More   ~ Robert Browning
297. Liberty is more feasible that equality, and pursuing liberty hurts equality less than pursuing equality hurts liberty.
298. Literature is mostly about sex and a little about having children.  Life is the other way around.   ~ David Lodge
299. Live your life so that if someone says 'Be yourself' it's good advice.   ~ Robert Orben
300. Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.   ~ Bertrand Russell
301. Manners are more important than laws   ~ Edmund Burke
302. Many can bear adversity, but few contempt.   ~ Thomas Fuller
303. Many think we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.   ~ Alfred North Whitehead
304. Mechanizing man's work had changed but not lighted his toil.     ~ John Stewart Mill
305. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.   ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
306. Men are born for each other’s sake, so either teach people or endure them   ~ Marcus Aurelius
307. Men are made by nature unequal.  It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.   ~ James Anthony Froude
308. Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.   ~ Machiavelli
309. Men believe in the truth of anything so long as they see that others strongly believe it is true   ~ Friedreich Nietzsche
310. Men do not desire merely to be rich, but to be richer than other men.   ~ John Stewart Mill
311. Men need sex more than women, and this gives women power over men. 
312. Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.   
313. Models are always false, their utility lies solely in their applicability in each situation.  
314. Moderation in all things   ~ Democritus
315. Modesty is a virtue not because it implies servile humility, but because it implies a combination of honesty and knowledge  
316. Monarchy operates on the principle of honor, republicanism on virtue, despotism on fear, and totalitarianism on ideology or (seen from within) on truth.
317. Money, it turns out, is exactly like sex. You thought of nothing else if you didn't have it, and thought of everything else once you did.   ~ James Baldwin
318. More than pay what makes for a happy organization is confidence that higher-ups are making good decisions.
319. Most analytical work is nonproductive: little is new and a significant portion is actually incorrect. 
320. Most new ideas are bad. 
321. Most people are too stupid to act in their own interest   ~ Nietsche
322. Most people do what they to do, no matter how heroic, because they have no option, they have a job to do so they go on and do it. 
323. Most people find confidence attractive and convincing in presenting ideas. Yet, it should be noted that confidence often implies ignorance or duplicity.
324. Most questions about correct word usage are questions of custom and authority rather than grammatical logic.  
325. Most questions are really statements.
326. Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.   ~ Bertrand Russell
327. Nature isn't good or bad, it's indifferent. 
328. Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.   ~ Abraham Lincoln
329. Neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim.   ~ Elie Weisel
330. Never complain and never explain.   ~ Benjamin Disraeli
331. Never explain--your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you anyway.   ~  Elbert Hubard
332. Never mistake motion for action   ~ Ernest Hemingway
333. Never speak ill of yourself, your friends will always say enough on that subject   ~ Charles Maurice
334. Never will man penetrate deeper into error than when he is continuing on a road which has led him to great success   ~ Friedrich Hayek
335. New theories, when first proposed and supported, may make the first page of the New York Times.  Their demise rarely makes even page 18. 
336. Nihilism, cynicism, and sarcasm are the symptoms of bored and guilt-ridden people who belittle those who create their comfort. 
337. No conqueror believes in chance.   ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
338. No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of motherwit, either in science or in practical life.   ~ Thomas Huxley
339. No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness   ~ Aristotle
340. No great philosophy is ever proven wrong, just irrelevant. 
341. No guest is so welcome in a friend’s house that he will not become a nuisance after three days Titus Macuious Plautus
342. No human thing is of serious importance   ~ Plato
343. No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back.   ~ Turkish Proverb
344. No one washes a rented car  
345. No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.  
346. No opinion should be held with fervor. None holds with fervor that 7x8=56, because it is known that this is the case. Fervor is necessary only in commending an opinion which is doubtful or demonstrably false.   ~ Voltaire
347. No people do so much harm as those who go about doing good.   ~ Bishop Mandell Creighton
348. No science ever defends its first principles.   ~ Aristotle
349. No single piece of macroeconomic advice given by the experts to their government has ever had the results predicted.   ~ Peter Drucker
350. Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter anyway   ~ Richard Feynman
351. Nobody forgets where he buried the hatched   ~ Frank McKinney
352. Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child
353. Nothing is ever achieved without enthusiasm.    ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
354. Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come   ~ Victor Hugo
355. Often times what people do that’s valuable is very simple, but they make it seem more complex in order to flatter themselves  
356. Older, accomplished people often fail miserably to appreciate new theories.
357. One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing   ~ Oscar Wilde
358. One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one, which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed.   ~ Aristotle
359. One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the essence of life.   ~ Anatole France
360. One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important   ~ Bertrand Russel
361. One should respect an honest person even if he expresses opinions differing from one’s own. Albert Einstein
362. Only a small part of scientific progress has resulted from planned search for specific objectives.   ~ A much more important part has been made possible by the freedom of the individual to follow his own curiosity.   ~ Irving Langmuir
363. Only by reading great works can you really get an inkling of how a great intellect works.
364. Only mediocrity can be trusted to always be at its best   ~ Sir Max Beerbohm
365. Only the simplest mind can believe that in a great controversy one side was mere folly   ~ AJ Kane
366. Only thoughts reached by walking have value.   ~ Nietsche
367. Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.   ~ Herbert Spencer
368. Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them   ~ Ann Landers
369. Our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.    ~ John Adams
370. Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this   ~ Gustave Flaubert
371. Our minds are lazier than our bodies   ~ La Rochefoucauld
372. Our narrative self interprets the many parallel processes going on in our brains
373. Our task is not to penetrate the essence of things, the meaning of which we do not know anyway, but rather to develop concepts which allow us to talk in a productive way about phenomena in nature   ~ Niels Bohr
374. Patience is the companion of wisdom.   ~ Augustine
375. Peace of Mind comes from not wanting to change others   ~ Gerald Jampolsky
376. Pedantry is the dotage of knowledge.   ~ Holbrook Jackson
377. People are best judged by their actions.  ~Max Perutz
378. People can do remarkably well in controlling complex machines whose workings are fully understood and open to view.   ~ Robert Chiles
379. People hate one another more if they imagine they are free and less if they know that they are determined. It is in this sense that knowledge is merciful   
380. People know less but are smarter than you think.   
381. People know more than they can articulate (eg, grammar)  
382. People need a sense of connectedness, working their best at their comparative advantage gives them the greatest appreciation they can get.  
383. People want to hire someone more intelligent but less ambitious than themselves.  
384. People who need advice are least likely to take it.  
385. People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground.   ~ Marcel Proust
386. Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away   ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
387. Personal retribution is the justice of those with a weak state  
388. Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. ~Jonathan Kozol
389. Politicians seek to elicit the words, “I don’t know why. I just like the guy.”
390. Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.   ~ Leonardo DaVinci
391. Prejudices, not faulty reasoning, are the main obstacles of truth   
392. Preparing for battle, plans were essential.  But once the battle was joined, plans were useless. ~Dwight Eisenhower
393. Pride is in general censured and decried, but mainly by those who have nothing to be proud of.  ~Arthur Schopenhauer
394. Progress has been much more general than retrogression   ~ Darwin
395. Progress can only be linear when you know exactly where you are going, so innovation necessarily involves a lot of wasted steps.    
396. Prose talent depends on having something to say and an interesting, highly developed way of saying it.   ~ Fitzgerald
397. Quoting one is plagiarism. Quoting many is research. 
398. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s own ignorance. ~Confucius
399. Reality is not subject to the limits of human knowledge.   ~ Troy Gustavel
400. Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
401. Reputation is what you are perceived to be, your character is what you really are. 
402. Rudeness is a weak man’s imitation of strength  ~George Orwell
403. Sadness diminishes a man’s powers   ~ Spinoza
404. Science is a great many things, … but in the end they all return to this: science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think.   ~ Jacob Bronowski
405. Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a head of stones is a house.   ~ Henri Poincare
406. Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful.  The rest is literature.     ~ Paul Valery
407. Scientific progress is the cumulative growth of a system of knowledge over time, in which useful features are retained and unuseful features are abandoned.   
408. Scientific research is not itself a science: it is still an art or craft.   ~ William H. George
409. Scientists are always dispensable, for in the long run, others will do what they have been unable to do themselves   ~ Peter Medwar
410. Search for pleasure, search for power, search for meaning.  The last is most important.
411. Seek simplicity and distrust it   ~ Alfred North Whitehead
412. Seek, above all, for a game worth playing   ~ Robert S. de Ropp
413. Selfishness and altruism are always present in children, one towards groupmates, the other towards outsiders.    ~
414. Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us   ~ Hoffer
415. Sexyness is unselfconscious and full of self-confidence, indifferent to the effect he or she is producing, and uninfluenced by others. There must be physical attraction, but beauty is unnecessary   
416. Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure.   ~ Knute Rockne
417. Silence is sometimes the best answer.
418. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~Leonardo Da Vinci
419. Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.   ~ Demosthenes
420. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.   ~ Bertrand Russell
421. So long as men praise you, you can only be sure that you are not yet on your own true path but on someone else’s   ~ Friedrich Nietzche
422. Some think people who are equal in any respect are equal all respects; because men are equally free, they  claim to be absolutely equal   ~ Aristotle
423. Sometimes being brutally honest seems cruel but is kind. Sometimes it is just cruel.   
424. Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.   ~ Lin Yutang
425. Sophistry plays into the hands of totalitarianism; if nothing is true, how can we oppose its lies?   
426. Status and money are substitutes 
427. Stories embody our search for meaning in an otherwise indifferent world, or experience of the rapture of being alive.
428. Stress isn’t caused by bad times, but by working where you feel your talents are being underappreciated.  ~Lynn Cheney
429. Stupidity is without anxiety.   ~ Goethe
430. Success is from effort, ability, and luck.
431. Success is peace of mind, attained only through self satisfaction knowing you made the effort to do the best you are capable    
432. Suffering only has meaning when you cannot control the cause.  Your attitude can then be heroic.  
433. Take the time to deliberate, but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in   ~ Andrew Jackson
434. Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.   ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
435. Talent should be judged at its best, character at its worst   ~ Lord Acton
436. The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook   ~ William James
437. The average man believes a thing first, and then searches for proof to bolster his opinion   ~ Elbert Hubbard
438. The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which shall last forever.   ~ AnatoleFrance
439. The best apology against false accusers is silence.   ~ Milton
440. The best use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.   ~ William James
441. The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.    ~ Linus Pauling
442. The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.   ~  George Orwell
443. The central business of adulthood, finding serious things to tie yourself down to   
444. The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses   ~ HL Mencken
445. The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.   ~ Galen
446. The devil can cite Scripture for his own purpose   ~ Shakespeare
447. The difference between a good and excellent employee is that the good one does what you tell them, and the excellent one does what you want.  
448. The difference between an average artist and a bad what is what he can draw.  The difference between a good artist and an average one is what he sees.   
449. The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people   ~ Chistopher Morley
450. The essence of sport is courage.   ~ Thomas McGuane
451. The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.   ~ Henry Bergson
452. The fact that an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.   ~ Bertrand Russell
453. The fortune of our lives…depends on employing well the short period of our youth   ~ Thomas Jefferson
454. The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself.  When we ask the time, we don’t want to know how watches are constructed.   ~ Geoge Lichtenberg
455. The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.   ~ Cicero
456. The goal of life is to be happy and have meaning.  Meaning comes from doing things others value. It's a balance, and takes prudence.
457. The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.   ~ Daniel J. Boorstin
458. The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.  
459. The high-minded man does not bear grudges, for it is not the mark of a great soul to remember injuries, but to forget them.   ~ Aristotle
460. The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.  
461. The implied volatility is the wrong volatility we use in the wrong model in order to get the right price.   ~ Peter Carr
462. The importance of a problem should not be judged by the number of pages devoted to it.   ~ Albert Einstein
463. The insights that make you rich change every couple years. Insights that make you happy don’t.  
464. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant.   ~ Einstein
465. The judge should not be young: he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from long observation of the nature of evil in others.  But knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.    ~ Aristotle
466. The man who early on regards himself as a genius is lost.   ~ George Christoph Lichtenberg
467. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all   ~ Oscar Wilde
468. the mark of a great writer is the ability to interest the uninterested in the subject she writes about  
469. The more fundamental a scientific law the more briefly it can be stated.  
470. The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that heralds new discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..."   ~ Isaac Asimov
471. The most imaginative people are the most credulous, for to them everything is possible.   ~ Alexander Chase
472. The most important characteristic of a good manager is someone who can recognize value, whether certain projects add value or simply a waste of time.  
473. The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that on the whole, it is a question whether the benevolence of mankind does more good or harm.   ~ Walter Bagehot
474. The most troublesome problem which confronts social engineering is how to provide for the untalented and, what is equally important, how to provide against them.   ~ Hoffer
475. The most vicious liars tell the truth in a way that leaves a false impression, leaving them technically immune to the charge of lying.  
476. The old aren't good at science, the young aren't good at politics   ~ Michael Chricton
477. The old repeat themselves, and the young have nothing to say. The boredom is mutual   ~ Jacques Bainville
478. The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.   ~ HL Mencken
479. The only way to deep happiness is to do something you love to the best of your ability   ~ Richard Feynman
480. The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.   ~ Eric Hoffer
481. The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.   ~ John Striderr Coleman
482. The poor don't need money or pity, they need temperance, diligence, thrift and other bourgeois virtues.
483. The preoccupation with detail necessary for works of creative genius is correlated with an   ~ inability to manage or delegate  
484. The problem with heart disease is the first symptom is often fatal.   ~ Michael Phelps
485. The real power of an individual isn't what they know, but the ability to learn. 
486. The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.   ~ Hoffer
487. The secret to being a bore is to tell everything.   ~ Voltaire
488. The state of nature is not peace, but of war.   ~ Kant
489. The stupid neither forgive nor forget. The naïve forgive and forget.  The wise forgive but do not forget.    ~ Thomas Szasz
490. The sum of our knowledge is not like what the mathematicians call a convergent series … where the study of a few terms may give the general properties of the whole.   ~ George Thomson
491. The superior man is distressed by his lack of ability   ~ Confuscious
492. The test of man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel   ~ George Bernard Shaw
493. The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: the abolition of private property.   ~ Karl Marx
494. The thing that we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down   ~ Mary Pickford
495. The thing you are most certain of, that your consciousness exists, you cannot prove.
496. The thruth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea.   ~ Jean-Luc Godard
497. The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt   ~ Bertrand Russel
498. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.   ~ Herbert Spenser
499. The ultimate test of our integrity is not how we deal with those whom we agree but how we deal with those who we do not agree.   ~ Nathaniel Branden
500. The value of an ideal has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.   ~ Oscar Wilde
501. The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.   ~ Peter DeVries
502. The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.   ~ Wallace Wattles
503. The virtue of simplicity is to avoid affectation.
504. The 'Western model of government' is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge.   ~ Fareed Zakaria
505. The wise learn many things from their foes.   ~ Aristophanes
506. The wise man will want to be with him who is better than himself.   ~ Aristotle
507. The world has always been the same; and there is always as much good fortune as bad in it.   ~ Machiavelli
508. The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who do nothing about them.    ~ Albert Einstein.
509. The world’s great men have not commonly been great scholars, or great scholars great men   ~ Oliver Holmes
510. The worst hatred is that which has superseded deep love.   ~ Euripides
511. The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.   ~ Quentin Crisp
512. Theory is an explicit set of instructions for building a mechanical imitation system 
513. Theory is knowledge that doesn't work. Practice is when everything works and you don't know why.   ~ Hermann Hesse
514. There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.   ~ F.H. Bradley
515. There are some things so stupid that only an intellectual can believe them   ~ George Orwell
516. There are three reasons for punishment: deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation.
517. There are too many people who imagine that there is something sophisticated about always believing the best of those who hate your country, and the worst of those who defend it.   ~ Margare Thatcher
518. There is a condition worse that blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there L Ron Hubbard
519. There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.   ~ Bertrand Russell
520. There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. 
521. There is no method but to be very intelligent.   ~ TS Eliot
522. There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.    ~ Thomas Jefferson
523. There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has not said it.   ~ Cicero
524. There is only one good, that is knowledge; there is only one evil, that is ignorance.   ~ Aristotle
525. There is simple ignorance, which is the source of lighter offenses, and double ignorance, which is accompanied by a conceit of wisdom.   ~ Aristotle
526. Things are never so bad that they can’t be made worse.   ~ Humphrey Bogart
527. Things exist before their idea does: the nation formed before the concept of a nation.
528. Think of your audience as intelligent but impatient readers 
529. This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter   ~ Hoffer
530. Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war.   ~ Winston Churchill
531. Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom   ~ Hoffer
532. Those with the best ideas are right about the most important things, not about the most things, or the most complicated things. 
533. Three ideas are central to science, that of equilibrium, cause and effect, and chance 
534. To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.   ~ Bertrand Russell
535. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility   ~ Hoffer
536. To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.   ~ William James
537. To be great is to be misunderstood.   ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
538. To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others   ~ Albert Camus
539. To be liked tell people things about themselves that they would like to be true.   
540. To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.   ~ Confucius
541. To change and to improve are two different things.   ~ German proverb
542. To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.   ~ Oscar Wilde
543. To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.   ~ Hippocrates
544. To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else—these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Lifetimes of ecstasy crowded into a single moment. ~Mark Twain
545. To escape criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.    ~ Elbert Hubbard
546. To generalize is to be an idiot.  To particularize alone is a distinction of merit.   ~ Blake
547. To inspire kids make them feel special, part of a brave corps on a secret, impossible mission.    
548. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.   ~ Charles Darwin
549. To make an improvement in the state of the art, one has to know the state of the art. This is inevitably detail oriented work.
550. To many, total abstinence is easier than total moderation.   ~ St.Augustine at Hippo
551. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.    
552. To those who think, life is a comedy, to those who feel, life is a tragedy
553. To Unlearn is as hard as to Learn   ~ Aristotle Politics B4
554. Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience   ~ William James
555. Truth springs from argument among friends   ~ David Hume
556. Ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful   ~ Oscar Wilde
557. Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden Hoffer
558. Use nouns and verbs, not adjectives and adverbs  
559. Use the phrase 'it's a bit like… ' in speeches  
560. We all have the strength to endure the misfortunes of others.   ~ La Rochefoucauld
561. We all start in ignorance and aim for virtue  
562. We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired by glory.   ~ Cicero
563. We are less hurt by the contempt of fools than by the lukewarm approval of men of intelligence   ~ Luc de Clapeirs deVauvenargues
564. We are making forecasts with bad numbers, but bad numbers are all we've got.   ~ Michael Penjer
565. We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact   ~ Hoffer
566. We are what we repeatedly do. Character is a habit.  
567. We ask advice, but we mean approval   ~ CC Colton
568. We believe a scientist because he can substantiate his remarks, not because he is eloquent and forcible in his enunciation.  In fact, we distrust him when he seems to be influencing us by his manner.   ~ I.A. Richards
569. We believe in axioms or assumptions, not because they are deduced from the real world, but because the consequences they imply fit the real world. 
570. We excuse the ignorant; we forgive the wicked   
571. We have a tendency to assume people are a unity, and thus good people all good, etc.  But the fact that Hitler was good to dogs and children isn’t a paradox.    ~ Richard Posner
572. We have so much ill fortune as inconstancy, or so much bad purpose as folly, we are not so full of evil as we are of inanity; we are not so wretched as we are base Montaigne
573. We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win.   ~ Edward Gibbon
574. We prove what we want to prove, and the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove.   ~ Emile Chartier
575. We receive three educations, one from our parents, one from our schoolmasters, and one from the world. The third contradicts all that the first two teach us.   ~ Charles Louis de Secondate
576. We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint. 
577. What is confidence? Ignorance, ignorance, sheer ignorance – you know there’s no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession, I think, that you’re timid or careful.   ~ Orson Wells
578. What is fruitful alone is true.   ~ Goethe
579. What is said when drunk has been thought out beforehand.   ~ Flemish proverb
580. What makes a principle a principle is our willingness to apply it to our own disadvantage. 
581. What to leave out and what to put in? That’s the problem   ~ Doctor Doolittle
582. What was hard to endure is sweet to recall   ~ European Proverb
583. Whatever enlarges hope will exalt courage.   ~ Samuel Johnson
584. Whatever you do, you need courage.Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to the end, requires some of the same courage a soldier needs.    ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
585. When a debater’s point is not impressive, he brings forth many arguments.  ~ Talmud
586. When a woman isn't beautiful, people tell her. "You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair. “   ~ Anton Chekhov
587. When choosing a boss, being competent is more important than being nice.    ~
588. When making a point, don’t feel compelled to say everything you know about something. It just obscures your point.
589. When people are free to do as we please, they usually imitate each other   ~ Hoffer
590. When subjects felt happy, there is a decrease of activity in the regions of the cerebral cortex that are committed to forethought and planning.  
591. When we feel that we lack whatever is needed to secure someone else’s esteem, we are very close to hating him   ~ Luc de Clapeirs de Vauvenargues
592. When you have nothing to say, say nothing   ~ Charles Colton
593. Whenever a subject takes seriously definitions and origins, it is involved in blather, not progress.
594. Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. Peter Drucker
595. Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority   ~ Hoffer
596. Whereas wisdom favors the probabilities, folly favors only the possibilities.   ~ Gracian Balthasar
597. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.   ~ Nietsche
598. Why was I born with such contemporaries?   ~ Oscar Wilde
599. Wide, cohesive lack of consistency is a great strength, because it can then be used to prove anything right, something found in all creeds.   
600. Woe unto you, when all men speak well of you!   ~ Luke,6:26
601. Worldviews are more a mental security blanket than a serious effort to understand the world   ~ Bryan Caplan
602. Wrong hypotheses, rightly worked from, have produced more useful results than unguided observations.   ~ Augustus De Morgan
603. You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty   ~ Sacha Guitry
604. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.   ~ Mary Tyler Moore
605. You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.   ~ Henry Ford
606. You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself.   ~ Galileo Galilei
607. You don't get somebody to like you by doing them a favor. That only tends to build resentment over the fact that they are needy and you are not. No, you ask them to do you a favor.   ~ Ben Franklin
608. You forgive others mainly for the selfish reason of moving on 
609. You have enemies? Good.  That means you have stood up for something   ~ Churchill
610. You have the right to your own opinion, not your own facts
611. You need data more than theory to destroy bad theories. 
612. You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.   ~ Mae West
613. You wouldn’t care what people think about you if you knew how little they think about you   
614. Your wisdom should be without pride.   ~ Augustine
615. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.   ~ Ray Bradbury
616. The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there. ~ Lois Bujold
617. Human beings are, necessarily, actors who...can be divided...into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not. ~ WH Auden