Quotes About Perspective

do not use this argument to avoid trying to learn from history. All I am saying is that it is not so simple; be suspicious of the "because" and handle it with care—particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence.

One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans.

I have anecdotal evidence in my business that MBAs tend to blow up in financial markets, as they are trained to simplify matters a couple of steps beyond their requirement. (I beg the MBA reader not to take offense; I am myself the unhappy holder of the degree.)

it is easy to see that history is truly written by losers with time on their hands and a protected academic position.

Wittgenstein's ruler: Unless you have confidence in the ruler's reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler. The less you trust a ruler's reliability (in probability called the prior), the more information you are getting about the ruler and the less about the table.

One would suppose that people living through the beginning of WWII had an inkling that something momentous was taking place. Not at all.*

central problem is that birds rarely write more than ornithologists—Combining

One may have a million ways to explain things, but the true explanation is unique, whether or not it is within our reach.

You can replace lies with truth; but myth is only displaced with a narrative.

I can find confirmation for just about anything, the

These may seem irrational to an outsider who defines rationality in terms of what he can explain.

but a problem in our minds, stemming from the way we look at it.

People with an engineering-oriented mind will tend to look at everything around as an engineering problem. This is a very good thing in engineering, but when dealing with cats, it is a much better idea to hire veterinarians than circuit engineers…

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

One day in the 1980s I had dinner with a famous speculator, a hugely successful man. He muttered the hyperbole that hit home: "much of what other people know isn't worth knowing.

I count myself one of those).

When you spend time of the bridge of a ship or in a coxswain's station with a large compass in front, you can easily develop the impression that the compass is directing the ship rather than merely reflecting its direction.

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it. Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that is what you are seeking.

we need to shift some of our worries to bigger things.

When asked to imagine the future, we have the tendency to take the present as a baseline

Borrowed wisdom can be vicious. I need to make a huge effort not to be swayed by well-sounding remarks. I remind myself of Einstein's remark that common sense is nothing but a collection of misconceptions acquired by age eighteen.

The best slave is someone who is overpaid and he knows it

Every man believes himself to be quite different

in fact, they are so blind to the odds that they treat odds of one in a thousand and one in a million almost in the same way.