Most people think that if they just had more information, they'd make better decisions. But the problem is rarely a lack of information — it's that we don't want to believe what the information is telling us.

The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation that isn't merely stated but is structurally enforced — meaning your capital, your clients, and your own psychology are all aligned so that you literally cannot sell at the wrong time.

The risk of paying too high a price for good-quality stocks is not the chief hazard for the thoughtful, enterprising investor — his chief hazard is the adoption of unsound principles or inapplicable methods under conditions of excitement and stress.

Most people think of risk as the probability of losing money. But the real risk is behaving in a way today that prevents you from being in the game tomorrow. Permanent impairment of capital is far less common than permanent impairment of judgment under pressure.

The ability to destroy your ideas rapidly instead of slowly when the occasion is right is one of the most valuable things you can have. You have to work hard on it. Ask yourself what are the arguments on the other side. It's bad to have an opinion you're proud of if you can't state the other side better than your opponents.

The truth is that we never know for certain about anything. The degree of assurance we feel about any proposition is not a measure of its truth, but a measure of our familiarity with the evidence bearing on it.

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. Most people don't recognize the institutional imperative at work — the tendency of organizations to mindlessly imitate whatever peers are doing, regardless of whether it makes sense.

Risk means more things can happen than will happen. The dangerous investor is not the one who doesn't know what will happen, but the one who doesn't know what he doesn't know.

We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.

The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. But what most people miss is that patience isn't passive — it requires the active courage to hold while everything around you screams sell.

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backwards. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where do we not want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of asking how to succeed, ask how to guarantee failure—then avoid it.

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean. Unconventional behavior is the only road to superior investment results, but it isn't for everyone. Uncomfortably idiosyncratic positions can result in short-term performance that is worse than the market or peers.

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. The long-term compounder who does nothing dramatic usually beats the person executing a brilliant short-term strategy.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need of the present voices a demand for change; and even then we rarely have the courage to deny that the past was right, we merely claim that it was right for another age.

The best chance of success is to buy something that is so good that even a fool can run it. Because sooner or later, a fool will.

The best thing for your own mind is to be exposed relentlessly to smart people who disagree with you.

The biggest investing errors come not from companies that fail, but from companies that succeed in ways you didn't anticipate. You prepare for the future by studying how the past was different from what people expected.

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

The sign of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating trends, but by asking what must be true about the future, and then working backward. Most people get this backwards—they assume the future will be like the past, just more so.

The best way to think about the future is to invent it. If you're unwilling to make mistakes, you're unwilling to try anything new, and you'll never learn.

The big question about artificial intelligence is not whether machines can think, but whether humans will stop thinking and let the machines do it for them.

The best thing you can do is compound money at high rates of return for a long time. That's the game. Most people don't understand that the biggest returns come from sitting, not trading.

The best investment is in the business that compounds the fastest while requiring the least capital to do so. Most people focus on the numerator and ignore the denominator.

The true paradox of human existence is that we are condemned to be free; we are forced to choose, and yet there is no certain ground on which to base our choices.

The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating the past, but by understanding what's actually changing and what isn't.

The best way to get smart is to try to be a little smarter than you were the day before. But the way to get rich is to try to be a little richer than you were the day before.

3quarksdaily.com

Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast: Alvin Roth on the Economics of Morally Contested Markets

Economic markets are efficient ways of deciding fair prices, at least in ideal circumstances of perfect competition, information, and choice. But there is more to life than fair prices.

The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating the past, but by understanding incentive structures and what they reward. Most people get this backwards.