William T

“Imagine how tricky it would be to bake a cake if the recipe called for 45 minutes in the oven, and you had to figure out if those were nominal minutes or inflation-adjusted minutes.”
― Steve Forbes, Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It

“The economic crisis seemed to have taught them a lesson: that liberty without discipline was a formula for ruin.”
― Alasdair Roberts, America's First Great Depression: Economic Crisis and Political Disorder after the Panic of 1837

“But things are even worse: in real life, every single bit of risk you take adds up to reduce your life expectancy. If you climb mountains and ride a motorcycle and hang around the mob and fly your own small plane and drink absinthe, and smoke cigarettes, and play parkour on Thursday night, your life expectancy is considerably reduced, although no single action will have a meaningful effect. This idea of repetition makes paranoia about some low-probability events, even that deemed “pathological,” perfectly rational.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

“If belief consists in an emotional reaction of the entire man on an object, how can we believe at will? We cannot control our emotions.” But there is a method. “We need only in cold blood ACT as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real.”
― Robert D. Richardson Jr., William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism