Quotes from Ray Dalio

An economy is not a complicated thing; it just has a lot of moving parts.

In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.

It all comes down to interest rates. As an investor, all you're doing is putting up a lump-sump payment for a future cash flow.

Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.

I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don't know what the future is going to hold.

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there's an education level that plays into the mix and so if it's inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

There is slow growth, but it is positive slow growth. At the same time, ratios of debt-to-incomes go down. That's a beautiful deleveraging.

I don't get caught up in the moment.

Though how nature works is way beyond man's ability to comprehend, I have found that observing how nature works offers innumerable lessons that can help us understand the realities that affect us.

I'm scared of one man, one vote because it suggests that everybody has an equal ability at making decisions, and I think that's dangerous.

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble.

Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.

In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.

Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.

If you have the power to see things through somebody else's eyes, it's like going from black and white to color or two dimensions to three dimensions.

If you don't own Gold, you know neither history nor economics.

I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one's strengths and weaknesses are.

The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I'm wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.

The media has the power to create an entrenched perception of reality that's incorrect.

I'm scared of people with power making the decision.

When two intelligent parties disagree, that's when the potential for learning and moving ahead begins.

Principles are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values. Principles connect your values to your actions.

Don't worry about looking good - worry about achieving your goals.

To test if you are worrying too much about looking good, observe how you feel when you find out you've made a mistake or don't know something.