Quotes About Confidence

I believe that the principal asset I need to protect and cultivate is my deep-seated intellectual insecurity.

80 to 90% of people think that they are above the average (and the median) in many things.

This, perhaps, is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one's ego.*

George Soros, cuando hace una apuesta financiera, no deja de buscar ejemplos que demuestren que su teoría inicial es falsa. Tal vez sea esto la auténtica confianza en uno mismo: la capacidad de observar el mundo sin necesidad de encontrar signos que halaguen el propio ego.*

Do not question his procedure, only his confidence.

a free person does not need to win arguments—just win.

It will take a lot of statistical information to override your hesitation.

And when you take risks, insults by half-men (small men, those who don't risk anything) are similar to barks by nonhuman animals: you can't feel insulted by a dog.

True, our knowledge does grow, but it is threatened by greater increases in confidence, which make our increase in knowledge at the same time an increase in confusion, ignorance, and conceit.

didn't care what my parents (and grandfather) thought of me.

This, perhaps, is true self-confidence: the ability to look at the world without the need to find signs that stroke one's ego.fn3

The optimal solution to being independent and upright while remaining a social animal is: to seek first your own self-respect and, secondarily and conditionally, that of others, provided your external image does not conflict with your own self-respect. Most people get it backwards and seek the admiration of the collective and something called "a good reputation" at the expense of self-worth for, alas, the two are in frequent conflict under modernity.

trusting that Nero would be able to read his mind.

lose. His personal confidence was wiped out.

our knowledge does grow, but it is threatened by greater increases in confidence, which make our increase in knowledge at the same time an increase in confusion, ignorance, and conceit.

whatever they are guessing has about a 2 percent chance to fall outside their range.

Though I keep trying to convince her of my internal humility and insecurity concealed under a confident exterior;

But it remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right. All pieces of information are not equal in importance.

When you don't have debt you don't care about your reputation in economics circles—and somehow it is only when you don't care about your reputation that you tend to have a good one. Just as in matters of seduction, people lend the most to those who need them the least.

The rarer the event, the less tractable, and the less we know about how frequent its occurrence—yet the rarer the event, the more confident these "scientists" involved in predicting, modeling, and using PowerPoint in conferences with equations in multicolor background have become.

It is much easier to signal self-confidence if you are exceedingly polite and friendly; you can control people without having to offend their sensitivity.

the courage to put forth their ideas

We can see that my activity in the market (and other random variables) depends far less on where I think the market or the random variable is going so much as it does on the degree of error I allow around such a confidence level.

He does not mind looking like a fool or, worse, an ignoramus.