Quotes About Success

There seems to be no such thing as a foolish decision if it results in profits.

that to understand successes and analyze what caused them, we need to study the traits present in failures.

The same applies to the conventional values of persistence, doggedness and perseverance: necessary, very necessary. One needs to go out and buy a lottery ticket in order to win. Does it mean that the work involved in the trip to the store caused the winning? Of course skills count, but they do count less in highly random environments than they do in dentistry.

most successes are caused by very few "windows of opportunity," failing to grab one can be deadly for one's career.

Clearly risk taking is necessary for large success—but it is also necessary for failure.

that really successful people say no to almost everything

This, I will call the cross-sectional problem: At a given time in the market, the most successful traders are likely to be those that are best fit to the latest cycle. This does not happen too often with dentists or pianists—because these professions are more immune to randomness.

The world is split between those who don't know how to start making money and those who don't know when to stop.

They will find something he did before when he was successful that he has subsequently stopped doing, and attribute his failure to that. The truth will be, however, that he simply ran out of luck.

blinding people to the odds of success when engaging in ventures.

but there is no point reading too much into success stories because we do not see the full picture.

Have you ever wondered why so many of these straight-A students end up going nowhere in life while someone who lagged behind is now getting the shekels, buying the diamonds

Remember that nobody accepts randomness in his own success, only his failure

An idea does not survive because it is better than the competition, but rather because the person who holds it has survived! Accordingly

There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

I said that taking a "scalable" profession is not a good idea, simply because there are far too few winners in these professions.

Just as one day some primitive tribesman scratched his nose, saw rain falling, and developed an elaborate method of scratching his nose to bring on the much-needed rain, we link economic prosperity to some rate cut by the Federal Reserve Board, or the success of a company with the appointment of the new president "at the helm.

We remember the martyrs who died for a cause that we knew about, never those no less effective in their contribution but whose cause we were never aware of—precisely because they were successful.

I will retire on these profits

He felt justified to show that "he fared well relative to the industry.

That all millionaires were persistent, hardworking people does not make persistent hard workers become millionaires:

at any point in time, the richest traders are often the worst traders.

I am convinced of that after spending almost all my adult and professional years in a fierce fight between my brain (not Fooled by Randomness) and my emotions (completely Fooled by Randomness) in which the only success I've had is in going around my emotions rather than rationalizing them.

Recall that Fat Tony was in favor of just "making a buck" as opposed to being "proven right.