Michael Lewis (author) quotes - page 3

It was neither healthy nor good when public stock exchanges introduced order types and speed advantages that high-frequency traders could use to exploit everyone else. This sort of inefficiency didn't vanish the moment it was spotted and acted upon. It was like a broken slot machine in the casino that pays off every time. It would keep paying off until someone said something about it; but no one who played the slot machine had any interest in pointing out that it was broken. (Michael Lewis (author))
The relationship of the big Wall Street banks to the high frequency traders, when you think about it, was a bit like the relationship of the entire society to the big Wall Street banks. When things went well, the HFT guys took most of the gains; when things went badly, the HFT guys vanished and the banks took the losses. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
The more money to be made gaming the financial markets, the more people would decide they were put on earth to game the financial markets – and create romantic narratives to explain to themselves why a life spent gaming the financial markets is a purposeful life. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck - and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
The Red Sox are a curious thing because so much here is media driven. You can't go fire half your scouts here because they are all friends with the local reporters. Your life is going to hell in the papers. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
Baseball has so much history and tradition. You can respect it, or you can exploit it for profit, but it's still being made all over the place, all the time. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . . View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
That's what happens when you're thirty-seven years old: you do the things you always did but the result is somehow different. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
What are the odds that people will make smart decisions about money if they don't need to make smart decisions--if they can get rich making dumb decisions? The incentives on Wall Street were all wrong; they're still all wrong. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing. (Michael Lewis (author))
I don't think there is a national pasttime. Watching TV is a national pasttime. Really. If there is a national pasttime, it is watching TV. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
It is the nature of being the general manager of a baseball team that you have to remain on familiar terms with people you are continually trying to screw. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
There are several insights at the heart of the A's system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that it's a team game. That no one player is going to make that much of a difference to your team, so for god's sake don't go blow a quarter of your budget on one guy. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
A tourist can't help but have a distorted opinion of a place: he meets unrepresentative people, has unrepresentative experiences, and runs around imposing upon the place the fantastic mental pictures he had in his head when he got there. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
Why pay $20 million to Harrison Ford? I dont even understand that. They think they have to do it... If someone puts a price on himself, that suggests he is irreplaceable, then he better find somewhere else to work. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)
If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. View quote
Michael Lewis (author)