The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating the past, but by understanding the incentive structures and constraints that will shape decisions.

The primary cause of failure in leadership is that men do not think enough. They trust to their memories and their passions, and act from them, when they ought to consult their understandings.

The best investment is in yourself. But the second-best is almost always in a business that does something you understand, run by people you trust, at a price that makes sense.

The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating the past, but by understanding what must be true about the future and then figuring out how we get there.

The best ideas have some magical quality where one day they seem impossible, and the next day they seem inevitable. The hard part is being in the room when the transition happens.

The difference between a wise decision and a foolish one is often not apparent until years later. What matters is having a systematic way to think about decisions, not the outcome of any single one.

The best business decision is often the one you don't make. Most of life's errors come from doing too much, not too little. Your job is to say no to a thousand good ideas so you can say yes to the one that matters.

The best way to think about the future is not by projecting the past, but by understanding what is actually changing in the world and which businesses benefit from that change versus which ones get hurt by it.

The difference between a good business decision and a bad one is often not the decision itself, but whether you had the intellectual humility to reverse it when new information arrived.

The goal of a business is to make money. The goal of a life is to avoid regret. These are often in conflict, and the resolution of that conflict is what separates a life well-lived from a merely profitable one.

The best time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. Once it starts raining, it's too late. Most people wait until there's a crisis, but the best businesses invest in capabilities and relationships before they desperately need them.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the exertion involved in a new action.

The best business decision is often the one you don't make. Most of life's errors come from doing things, not from leaving them undone.

The difference between a tolerable decision and a good decision is that a good decision can be explained in one sentence. If you find yourself giving a speech to justify it, you've made a tolerable decision.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the terrors of a too-little-explored future.

The difficulty in life is the choice. When you are young, there seems to be so much time and so many choices, none of which seems to matter very much because it seems that later on you can always choose again. But then, suddenly, you are old.

The best business decision is often the one you don't make. Most of life's errors come from doing the wrong thing, not from doing nothing.

The best process for making decisions is often worse than the best decision-maker. Process forces you to justify actions in advance; great decision-makers often know things they can't yet articulate. The trap is confusing process with wisdom.

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth. It is the always-uncertain future growth upon which the investor must capitalize, and it is those who will profit who must pay the delicate task of correctly appraising such uncertain future.

The best thing for your long-term results is to be boring. Exciting investing is likely to be bad for your wealth. Most of the time, the best thing to do is nothing.

The best thing you can do is to be a learning machine. You should go out of your way to try to be wrong and to seek disconfirming evidence.

The best business decision is often the one you don't make. Inaction has a cost that most entrepreneurs systematically underestimate because they can't see the counterfactual.

The purpose of an open mind, like an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.

The great investors buy when others are fearful, and sell when others are greedy. But the converse is also true—they tend to avoid buying when others are greedy, even if the business is good. Temperament matters more than IQ.

We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think. The emotional brain is so intimately involved in all aspects of cognition that there is no reason to separate emotion and cognition.

The best decisions in business often come from understanding what you don't know rather than from expertise in what you do. Most people are taught to eliminate ignorance, but the real skill is in recognizing which ignorance matters.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

The business schools reward complex behavior, but simple behavior is more effective. Most people overcomplicate their investing and their business decisions.

The best time to think about the exit is before you start the company. If you don't know what success looks like, you'll never achieve it.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by drowning in information while starving for wisdom.

The best business decision is often the one that's hardest to make—the decision to do nothing when everyone else is doing something.

One cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for something. It is enough that we prepare for the one or the other.