Quotes from Andrew Tobias

You want 21 percent risk free? Pay off your credit cards.

The best thing I have are 5 percent bonds from 1780, denominated from $1 to $20. As far as I can tell, they are obligations from the United States of America, so I should be able to walk down to the Federal Reserve and redeem the uncanceled ones. With 217 years of accrued interest, for a $20 bond, that's about $800,000.

Man's natural life span, 75 to 90 years or so, has not increased. It is the number of us who manage to attain it that has increased.

Hay fever suffers tend to be above average in intelligence.

No wonder lawyers, who control the legal system, have fought so hard, and with great success, against "no fault" insurance. No fault, no lawsuits. No lawsuits, no lunch.

There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.

In both cases, it is the prejudice, not the condition, that does the harm. It may be, as some would have it, that blacks are inherently inferior to whites or that homosexuals are all, by definition, sick. So what? Even if either condition truly is inherently undesirable, no manner of social pressure will turn blacks into whites or gays into straights. Social pressure will only exaggerate the handicap. It is still the prejudice, more than the condition, that does the harm.

I was terribly intolerant, but they were terribly threatening to me. They were everything I was afraid of becoming.

A very basic thing to know about your money is that, over the really long run, people who buy equities—stocks—will almost surely make a lot more money (if they're at all sensible in how they do it) than people who make "safer" investments.

The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.

But successful investors tend to be not too self-destructive. They tend to be patient, they tend not to follow the crowd, and they tend not to be too guilty about winning.

In short: Readily available low-cost life insurance would be a threat to the industry, and whatever threatens the life insurance industry threatens America.

I think a lot of people would rather have more control over their life than less.

Life insurance in America has traditionally been dominated by mutual insurers. Twelve of the fifteen largest life insurers are mutuals.

Life insurance is a commodity.

Now listen. You can't fool all the people all the time-- but I want you to try.

One of the advantages of the book's having been out there for more than a quarter century is that there's been time for people to report back on what it's done for them.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.

Still, most people don't have much money. So finding ways to come out a couple of thousand dollars ahead every year still matters.

The larger the deductible you choose, the less insurance you are buying. Insurers want to sell insurance.

The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.

There's no such thing as altruism.