Quotes from George Soros

Demand may be a suitable subject for psychologists, supply may be the province of engineers or management scientists; both are beyond the scope of economics.

I'm not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I'm doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

You know, I learned at a very early age that what kind of social system or political system prevails is very important. Not just for your well-being, but for your very survival. Because, you know, I could have been killed by the Nazis. I could have wasted my life under the Communists. So, that's what led me to this idea of an open society. And that is the idea that is motivating me.

I CAN STATE THE CORE IDEA in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants' view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity.

The anti-resource curse initiative has stronger legs than most and that has made me very enthusiastic.

As I like to put it, we have hit pay dirt. The effort to cure the resource curse is a good example of what private foundations working with NGOs can accomplish.

But I don't like working. I do the absolute minimum that is necessary to reach a decision. There are many people who love working. They amass an inordinate amount of information, much more than is necessary to reach a conclusion. And they become attached to certain investments because they know them intimately. I am different. I concentrate on the essentials. When I have to, I work furiously because I am furious that I have to work. When I don't have to, I don't work.

Tell us about the crisis of 1981. It started much earlier, around the time I spelled out my three-stage strategy. Here I was, extremely successful, but I made a point of denying my success. I worked like a dog. I felt that it would endanger my success if I abandoned my sense of insecurity. And what was my reward? More money, more responsibility, more work-and more pain-because I relied on pain, as a decision-making tool.

We are accustomed to think of events as a sequence of facts: one set of facts follows another in a never-ending chain. When a situation has thinking participants, the chain does not lead directly from fact to fact. It links a fact to the participants' thinking and then connects the participants' thinking to the next set of facts.

Después del colapso de 2008, pude hacer arreglos para que casi un millón de escolares de Nueva York, cuyas familias recibían asistencia social o cupones de alimentos, recibieran un cheque por $200, sin nada a cambio.

A boom/bust process occurs only when market prices find a way to influence the so-called fundamentals that are supposed to be reflected in market prices.

We need to maintain law and order. We need to maintain peace in the world. We need to protect the environment. We need to have some degree of social justice, equality of opportunity. The markets are not designed to take care of those needs. That's a political process. And the market fundamentalists have managed to reduce providing those public goods.

Yes. I never claimed credit for it. I was involved in the process. As coach, I said to him that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the risk-reward relationship is extremely favorable, and therefore we should play it on a larger scale than normal. And he took my advice.

I recognize that I may be wrong. This makes me insecure. My sense of insecurity keeps me alert, always ready to correct my errors. I do this on two levels. On the abstract level, I have turned the belief in my own fallibility into the cornerstone of an elaborate philosophy.

To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride. Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

Politicians will respect, rather than manipulate, reality only if the public cares about the truth and punishes politicians when it catches them in deliberate deception.

If the cognitive function operated in isolation, without any interference from the manipulative function, it could produce knowledge. Knowledge is represented by true statements. A statement is true if it corresponds to the facts. But if the manipulative function is at work, the facts no longer serve as an independent criterion of truth.

In addition to going against the herd, you've said one of your techniques is to set yourself outside the process. What do you mean exactly? How do you get outside? I am outside. I am a thinking participant and thinking means putting yourself outside the subject you think about. Perhaps it comes easier to me than to many others because I have a very abstract mind and I actually enjoy looking at things, including myself, from the outside.

What is there to say? Risk taking is painful. Either you are willing to bear the pain yourself or you try to pass it on to others. Anyone who is in a risk taking business but cannot face the consequences is no good.

I had a very interesting experience with P.C.Chatterjee, one of my investment advisors. His concept was to look at technology companies as asset-rich companies, where the customer was treated as an asset. If a company had a strong customer base, it could be worth a lot even though it had a lousy management and a lack of products. And he felt that with a little push, these values could be unlocked. It proved to be a valid concept.

In economics, contingent, time- and context-bound theories

In economics, contingent, time- and context-bound theories may yield more useful explanations and predictions than timeless and universal generalizations based on ungrounded assumptions.

The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposite position. I assume that markets are always wrong.

We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.