Quotes from John Kay

The great muckraker Upton Sinclair had expressed a deep insight into the relationship between the world of ideas and the world of practical men: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'34

The claim that the only constraints on our success are the limits of our imagination, although generally false, has lifted hearts for millennia. Grand visions take precedence over prosaic numbers.

A policy of 'naming and shaming' is ineffective if everyone has been named and shamed.

For all that has recently been said about 'the wisdom of crowds', the authors prefer to fly with airlines which rely on the services of skilled and experienced pilots, rather than those who entrust the controls to the average opinion of the passengers.

The disparities of income and wealth in the world today are an affront to any reflective person.

Stock markets are not a way of putting money into companies, but a means of taking it out. The

No one will be buried with the epitaph 'He maximised shareholder value

There is a role for carrots and sticks, but to rely on carrots and sticks alone is effective only when we employ donkeys and we are sure exactly what we want the donkeys to do.

He described the securities—called Abacus—to a girlfriend: I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself 'Well, what if we created a "thing," which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?').15

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'35

We all chase the dream, but when taken to excess by individuals or in crowds, the chasing of dreams becomes madness. And chasing the dream with other people's money is at best irresponsible and often fraudulent.

The Thatcherite emphasis on hard work and self-reliance sat alongside a belief that compassion should be a private virtue rather than a social practice. These are attitudes very different from the greedy individualism and sense of personal entitlement characteristic of much of the finance sector today.

In war, resources lead to success: in business, success leads to resources. This is a fundamental difference between the processes of war and competition.

Through experiences we normally associate with unhappiness they achieve greater happiness than if they had sought happiness directly.

becomes a competitive advantage when it

Lending to firms and individuals engaged in the production of goods and services – which most people would imagine was the principal business of a bank – amounts to about 3 per cent of that total (see Chapter 6

organisers of weight-guessing competitions and advisers helping people to refine their guesses.

The computer is very good at solving the problem we have specified and asked it to solve, but less useful when we are not quite sure what the problem is.

Art," said Picasso, "is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

People often say that shareholders 'own' the company. They don't, as you will find out if you turn up at Apple's spectacular new headquarters campus at Cupertino or Berkshire's small office suite in Omaha, Nebraska, to assert your 'ownership'. What shareholders own is their shares, and ownership of shares confers a variety of rights. The value of a share is the value of these rights.

Success depends on the flair, skills and initiative of people who cannot be effectively supervised.

Although much of what is written about finance would give a different impression, you are not providing funds for business investment by holding a company's shares, directly or indirectly. As I have explained, companies large enough to be quoted on a stock exchange are, overwhelmingly, self-financing. The relationship between the long-term investor and Exxon Mobil is one of stewardship.

In an illuminating comment on the financialisation of business, Jack Welch — now long retired from General Electric — would in 2009 proclaim shareholder value 'the dumbest idea in the world.

There is probably no worse investment strategy than following the conventional wisdom with a time-lag, and that is precisely what many small investors do - often with the encouragement of their advisers.