There is less emphasis on trying to reason out things on the basis that they are special because they are unique, which in a financial context is perhaps the definition of a speculation. But pattern recognition is his default way of thinking. It creates an impulse always to connect new knowledge to old and to primarily be interested in new knowledge that genuinely builds on the old.

– Alice Schroeder

Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.

– Jeff Bezos

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.

– Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

You cannot get educated by this self-propagating system in which people study to pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything. You learn something by doing it yourself, by asking questions, by thinking, and by experimenting.

– Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman

For the ideal philosopher is one who understands the charm of women without being coarse, who loves life heartily but loves it with restraint, and who sees the unreality of the successes and failures of the active world, and stands somewhat aloof and detached, without being hostile to it.

– Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

– Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, Education Through Recreation (1932)

Value investing is the one form of investing that puts risk management at the very heart of the approach. However, you will have to rethink the notion of risk. You will learn to think of risk as a permanent loss of capital, not random fluctuations. You will also learn to understand the trinity of sources that compose this risk: valuation, earnings and balance sheets.

– James Montier

Talent x effort = skill. Skill x effort = achievement. Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.

– Angela Duckworth, Grit

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

– Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks