Author: LINUS FERNANDES
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Randall Stutman: Willing to be bad
“You’re only as good as you’re willing to be bad…The fact that you’re not going to be good at something or that you’re going to fail at something—that’s OK. Because you’re never going to get good unless you’re willing to be bad.”—Randall Stutman.
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Stephen King: When you write
“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
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Ellen DeGeneres: Catch-and-release
“Catch-and-release, that’s like running down pedestrians in your car and then, when they get up and limp away, saying —Off you go! That’s fine. I just wanted to see if I could hit you.” —Ellen DeGeneres.
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Stanley Druckenmiller: Envision the future
“Every event in the world affects some security somewhere. You’re constantly trying to figure out the puzzle and envision the world as it might be, as opposed to it his way now. It’s been a love affair from the day I got in the business…. If you envision the future, and you’re wrong, it’s not…
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William Somerset Maugham: Weak men
“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.” —William Somerset Maugham.
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Benjamin Graham & David Dodd: Adequate value
“The essential point is that security analysis does not seek to determine exactly what is the intrinsic value of a given security. It needs only to establish that the value is adequate – e.g., to protect a bond or to justify a stock purchase or else that the value is considerably higher or considerably lower…
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Edith Wharton: What marriage is for
“I begin to see what marriage is for. It’s to keep people away from each other. Sometimes I think that two people who love each other can be saved from madness only by the things that come between them: children, duties, visits, bores, relations, the things that protect married people from each other.” —Edith Wharton.
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Seth Klarman: Precise doesn’t mean accurate
“Many investors insist on affixing exact values to their investments, seeking precision in an imprecise world, but business value cannot be precisely determined…. Any attempt to value businesses with precision will yield values that are precisely inaccurate. The problem is that it is easy to confuse the capability to make precise forecasts with the ability…
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Stendhal: It does not matter
“If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.” —Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle).
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Lord Byron: Only just
“He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?” —Lord Byron.
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Seth Klarman: Margin of safety
“Because investing is as much an art as a science, investors need a margin of safety. A margin of safety is achieved when securities are purchased at prices sufficiently below underlying value to allow for human error, bad luck, or extreme volatility in a complex, unpredictable, and rapidly changing world. According to Graham, ‘The margin…
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Robert Anton Wilson: B.S.
“Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone’s B.S. too seriously, especially your own.” —Robert Anton Wilson.
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Seth Klarman: Far more volume
“You must buy on the way down. There is far more volume on the way down than on the way back up, and far less competition among buyers. It is almost always better to be too early than too late, but you must be prepared for price markdowns on what you buy.” —Seth Klarman.
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English proverb: Hundred schoolmasters
“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” —English Proverb.
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Thomas Jefferson: Tranquility and occupation
“It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.” —Thomas Jefferson.
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Martin Luther King Jr: Put your faith in the nonconformist
“The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!” —Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Peter D Kaufman: Money is not changing hands
“We tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possessions because we know what they cost. But at the same time we neglect things which are much more precious because they don’t come with price tags attached: The real value of things like our eyesight or relationships or freedom can be hidden to us,…
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Jane Welsh Carlyle: Great injustice
“When one has been threatened with a great injustice, one accepts a smaller as a favour.” —Jane Welsh Carlyle.
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Howard Marks: Uncommon strength
“When money is easy, few people opt to sit out the dance…. When faced with the choice between (a) maintaining high standards and missing deals and (b) making risky investments, most people will choose the latter. Professional investment managers especially may fear the consequences of idiosyncratic behavior that’s bound to look wrong for a while.…
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Carl Jung: The world will tell you
“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.”—Carl Jung.
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Haruki Murakami: People’s memories
“People’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.” —Haruki Murakami.
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Abraham Joshua Heschel: All are responsible
“Some are guilty, but all are responsible.” —Abraham Joshua Heschel.
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Alan Perlis: Early bird
“In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.” —Alan Perlis.
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Ronald Coase: Torture the data
“If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.” — Ronald Coase.
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Simone de Beauvoir: Life of others
“One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion.” —Simone de Beauvoir.
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Howard Marks: Non consensus views
“To achieve superior investment results, you have to hold non consensus views regarding value, and they have to be accurate. That’s not easy. The attractiveness of buying something for less than it’s worth makes eminent sense. So how is one to find bargains in efficient markets? You must bring exceptional analytical ability, insight or foresight.…
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Edward R Tufte: Wrong numbers
“If the statistics are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers.” —Edward R. Tufte.
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Baltasar Gracian: When you counsel someone
“When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.” —Baltasar Gracian.
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Dean Schlicter: Go down deep enough
“Go down deep enough into anything and you will find Mathematics.” —Dean Schlicter.
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Charles Peguy: Accomplice of liars and forgers
“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” —Charles Peguy.
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Bianca Sparacino: Worth fighting for
“When you’re young, you believe that there will be many people with whom you’ll connect with deeply. Later in life, you come to realize that it only happens a few times. A few moments, frozen in genuine beauty, where you look at someone and you know, from a place deep within yourself, that they are…
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Rudyard Kipling: Best of everybody
“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble.”— Rudyard Kipling.
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Umberto Eco: Fear prophets
“Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” —Umberto Eco.
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Horace Mann: Same story every day for a year
“If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.” — Horace Mann.
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The Buddha: This and that
“This Exists, So that Exists. This is not there, so that is not there. This Ends, So that Ends. This Arises, So that Arises.” —The Buddha.
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Chris Begg: One decision
“We are seeking a level of Mastery in understanding the fundamental truths that enable a business to earn superior returns, with a healthy margin of safety over the longest duration possible. We prefer ‘one decision’ (buy) to ‘three decision’ (buy, sell, reallocate) investments, therefore the duration and sustainability of a business’s advantages are important to…
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Isaac Asimov: Sense of morals
“Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.” —Isaac Asimov.
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Leo Tolstoy: Excuses
“Most men spend more energy coming up with excuses than if they simply found the fix to their problems.” —Leo Tolstoy.
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J D Salinger: Paronoiac in reverse
“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” —J.D. Salinger.
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George Marshall: Prevent it
“The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.” —George Marshall, US Army Chief, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Nobel laureate.
