Quotes from William J. Bernstein

human phenomenon: our species' preference for "positively skewed outcomes"—ones with low-probability but enormous payoffs, even if the average of all payoffs is negative.

Do not trust historical data—especially recent data—to estimate the future returns of stocks and bonds. Instead, rely on interest and dividend payouts and their growth/failure rates.

Manifestly, man is the ape that imitates, tells stories, seeks status, morally condemns others, and yearns for the good old days, all of which guarantee a human future studded with religious and financial mass manias.

Novelists and historians have known for centuries that people do not deploy the powerful human intellect to dispassionately analyze the world, but rather to rationalize how the facts conform to their emotionally derived preconceptions.

a high degree of narrative transportation impairs one's critical facilities.

If you want to convince someone, target their System 1 with narrative, not their System 2 with facts and data.

Although the Romans knew Chinese silk, they knew not China. They believed that silk grew directly on the mulberry tree, not realizing that the leaves were merely the worm's home and its food.

La mejor época posible para invertir es cuando el cielo amenaza tormenta, puesto que los inversores descontarán los ingresos futuros de las acciones a una tasa muy elevada.

The highly decentralized nature of the medieval world of Indian Ocean trade produced a bubbling stew of Darwinian economic competition, in which those states whose political "mutations" were best suited to trade and commerce thrived, and those whose institutions were not withered.

As populations grow beyond Dunbar's number, face-to-face contact no longer suffices to maintain political control. At this point, writing supplies the best mechanism for communicating among large numbers of people, and power naturally accrues to the literate. Consequently, societies with high rates of literacy, such as Athens, tend to have more smoothly running republics than those with low rates, such as the late Roman one.

In one of history's most bizarre chains of causation, the brutal, efficient newcomers were driven by a hunger for, of all things, culinary ingredients that today lie largely unused in most Western kitchens.

Whoever is lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice.—Tomé

Personal finance, like most important aspects of life, is a never-ending quest. The competent investor never stops learning.

You have to understand what market history looks like. What market history tells you is that the very, very best investments are made when things look the worst.

For the taxable investor, indexing means never having to say you're sorry.

Investment success accrues not so much to the brilliant as to the disciplined.

It's human nature to find patterns where there are none and to find skill where luck is a more likely explanation.

Bluntly put, there's no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be.