Quotes from Michael Lewis

The more money one has, the less he values each additional increment, or, equivalently, that the utility of any additional dollar diminishes with an increase in capital.

Whatever that guy is buying, I want to short it.

Yosef Tversky, the son of a rabbi, despised religion and loved Russian literature, and found a great deal of amusement in what came out of the mouths of his fellow human beings. His father had turned away from an early career in medicine, Amos explained to friends, because "he thought animals had more real pain than people and complained a lot less.

In Redelmeier's experience, doctors did not think statistically. "Eighty percent of doctors don't think probabilities apply to their patients," he said. "Just like 95 percent of married couples don't believe the 50 percent divorce rate applies to them, and 95 percent of drunk drivers don't think the statistics that show that you are more likely to be killed if you are driving drunk than if you are driving sober applies to them.

Fear and, to a lesser extent, greed are what make money move.

If you wanted to predict how people would behave, Munger said, you only had to look at their incentives.

He was the guy who always won the game of chicken because his opponents suspected he might actually enjoy a head-on collision.

It's Laissez-Faire Until You Get In Deep Shit

The University of Michigan psychologist Dick Nisbett, after he'd met Amos, designed a one-line intelligence test: The sooner you figure out that Amos is smarter than you are, the smarter you are.

The only one among them who wrestled a bit with their role—as the guys who had made a fortune betting against their own society—was Vincent Daniel. "Vinny, being from Queens, needs to see the dark side of everything," said Eisman. To

For though there was no chance of persuading a pension fund manager looking to make a longer-term loan to buy a Freddie Mac bond that could evaporate tomorrow, one could easily sell him the third tranche of a CMO.

The options market also tended to presuppose that the distant future would look more like the present than it usually did.

In medicine there were too many 120-volt plugs that fit into 240-volt outlets. The ease with which a nurse might give one patient medicine intended for another, for example

the difference between a great software guy and an okay software guy is huge. A great software guy is worth ten times an okay software guy.

One day someone will write the history of the strange relationship between the United States government and its citizens. It would need at least a chapter on the government's attempts to save the citizens from the things that might kill them.

Fighting wildfires is the most visible thing the USDA does. It's the places in our government where the cameras never roll that you have to worry about most.

What struck Redelmeier wasn't the idea that people made mistakes. Of course people made mistakes! What was so compelling is that the mistakes were predictable and systematic. They seemed ingrained in human nature.

No longer were the prices of ordinary mortgage bonds allowed to roam inefficiently, for they were now linked to the CMO market, in much the same way that flour is linked to the market for bread. Fair value for CMOs (the finished product) implied a fair value for conventional mortgage bonds (the raw materials).

El hombre es un artefacto determinista metido en un universo probabilístico

She called the Red Cross, only to find that the Red Cross has no interest in helping, either. (She learned later that they didn't want to offend their Republican donors.)

I've always felt ideas were a dime a dozen," he said. "If you had one that didn't work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another.

They stopped testing me. And if you're not going to test me, I'm gonna smoke!

In Danny and Amos's working theory, the paradox was now resolved differently. It wasn't that (or at least not only that) people anticipated regret when making a decision in the first situation that they did not anticipate in making the second. It was that they treated 50 percent as more than 50 percent and saw the difference between 4 percent and 2 percent as far less than it was.

As Eisman had risen, Danny had sunk in his chair, instinctively. There is always the possibility of embarrassment, Danny said. But it's like watching a car crash. You can't not watch.