Quotes from Michael Lewis

There was something deeply dysfunctional about how the government worked that I never fully grasped," Joe would later say. "There's no one driving the bus.

One VC in particular had a gift for persuading mainstream CEOs that the only place to be was a Silicon Valley start-up: John Doerr.

Era como si fuéramos en un avión a diez mil metros que se hubiera averiado y Wachovia todavía tuviera unos cuantos paracaídas a la venta. Nadie más vendía ya paracaídas, pero en realidad tampoco nadie quería creer que se necesitaran. […] Después de eso, el mercado se cerró por completo.»

From the point of view of a smart, talented person trying to decide whether to work for the U.S. government, the single most glaring defect was the absence of an upside. The jobs weren't well paid compared to their equivalents in the private sector. And the only time government employees were recognized was if they screwed up--in which case they often became the wrong kind of famous.

You didn't need to raise millions to build your product and in the process whittle your stake down to almost nothing. You found the concept, you wrote the software to exploit the concept, you sold the company to the public.

in trouble. At the time fallen angels

By early 1996 Americans were spending $1.5 trillion a year on their health care and about a third of that was pure waste. Much of the waste could be avoided simply by eliminating the paperwork.

The initial promise of computer technology was to remove the intermediary from the financial market, or at least reduce the amount he could scalp from that market. The reality turned out to be a windfall for financial intermediaries—of somewhere between $10 billion and $22 billion a year, depending on whose estimates you wanted to believe.

The Irish people and their country are like lovers whose passion is heightened by their suspicion that they will probably wind up leaving each other.

journalist asked her about it. "What scares me most and what I think about most," said Charity, "is our ability to respond to a new pathogen, maybe one we've never seen before, or an old pathogen, like influenza that's just mutated. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 was over 100 years ago now. The world is overdue for a pandemic like that, whether it's influenza or something else. And in public health, we know that we have to be prepared for that.

We sat there wrapping our heads around what we'd done." Six years after the storm, Uccellini described the advances in weather prediction from about the end of World War II as "one of the major intellectual achievements of the twentieth century.

On the streets of Memphis I also needed a lot of

We don't really celebrate the accomplishments of government employees. They exist in our society to take the blame.

What scares me most and what I think about most," said Charity, "is our ability to respond to a new pathogen, maybe one we've never seen before, or an old pathogen, like influenza that's just mutated. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 was over 100 years ago now. The world is overdue for a pandemic like that, whether it's influenza or something else. And in public health, we know that we have to be prepared for that.

As my last New Year's resolution, I had stopped selling people things I didn't think they should buy. For Lent, I had given up my New Year's resolution.

He attracted followers as a magnet attracts filings. In other words, he was exactly the right man to take an inherently implausible idea and lead others to believe in it.

train were harder than usual to ignore. They were

Confirmation bias is the most insidious because you don't even realize it is happening

They were less and less able to buy and sell big chunks of stock in a gulp.

A system was groping toward a solution, but the solution required someone in it to be brave, and the system didn't reward bravery. It was stuck in an infinite loop of first realizing that it was in need of courage and then remembering that courage didn't pay. Charity didn't think of it this way, but it was striking how often the system returned to her and very nearly sought her leadership, without ever formally acknowledging its need.

There are two ways to be a health officer," he said. "One is to pretend it's not happening.

I'm sure in some way the neurosystem will one day be integrated with the computer," said Clark.

In eight years alone—2010–2018—the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration collected enough material to make 160 nuclear bombs.

Long rose and explained how he intended to restore the company to the heart of the Magic Diamond.