Quotes from Janet M. Tavakoli

Narcissists have poor self-esteem, but they are typically very successful. They feel entitled; they're self-important; they crave admiration and lack empathy. They are also exploitative and envious. The malignant types never forget a slight. They may kill you ten years later for cutting them off in traffic. But they act perfectly normal while plotting their revenge.

Hedge funds have made massive leveraged credit bets, knowing that their upside is billions in fees and their downside is millions in fees.

Strive to engage in activities that require constant self-development. Nurture and develop the physical body, but also our spiritual nature. We exist for a purpose: to honor our spirituality. When we do, we cannot help but love others. Hurting others is easily recognized as a crime against ourselves. It's no coincidence that all religions teach this at their core.

Aristotle was convinced that a trained memory helped the development of logical thought processes.

Ricci created memory palaces in his mind. Each item in the palace represented a series of concepts. The rooms and locations within the palace served as directories and files, similar to computer data storage. Ricci instantaneously learned, retained and retrieved hundreds of new Chinese kanji, to the astonished delight of Chinese nobles.

The harder a government, such as a dictatorship, tries to maintain monetary policy autonomy, the more it must either limit the movement of capital into and outside of the country, or the more it must compromise exchange-rate stability.

Homeland security requires a secure homeland currency.

It is in the interest of those who control our energy to make it seem that the status quo is natural, right, and impossible to change. It is in our interest to figure out this is not always true." —Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It was like having your teenager sell a spin in your Ferrari for a dollar. The more rides he sells, the more money he makes, until he wrecks your Ferrari.

There are qualities to richness we all have to develop on our own. Money cannot buy a man a pleasant sense of humor, money will not make a man behave decently, and money cannot teach a man how to treat others with dignity.

To expect bad men never to do bad things is insensate; it is hoping for the impossible. To tolerate their offenses against others, and expect none done against oneself, is both irrational and arbitrary." —Marcus Aurelius