If what we change does not change us we are playing with blocks.
We can’t change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring.
The entire pursuit of value investing requires you to see where the crowd is wrong so that you can profit from their misperceptions.
But I think it’s important to discuss just how easy it is for any of us to get caught up in things that might seem unthinkable—to get sucked into the wrong environment and make moral compromises that can tarnish us terribly. We like to think that we change our environment, but the truth is that it changes us. So we have to be extraordinarily careful to choose the right environment—to work with, and even socialize with, the right people. Ideally, we should stick close to people who are better than us so that we can become more like them.
From time to time, you have seminal personalities who really change the way the world sees itself - people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Warren Buffett is that kind of person in the business world.
I’m trying to manage myself, not just my portfolio.
I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, 'You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit. ' As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammible and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
When I try to describe myself to God I say, “Lord, remember me? Black? Female? Six-foot tall? The writer?” And I almost always get God's attention.
It's only in fairy tales that princesses can afford to wait for the handsome prince to save them. In real life, they have to bust out of their own coffins and do the saving themselves.
It's funny, this thing about happiness. It's a commodity that was imported from America in the Fifties. I see myself simply as living my life. . . . I feel it's pushing your luck to define how happy you are.