Ray Dalio Quotes

There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.

He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.

It's more important to do big things well than to do small things perfectly.

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

For every mistake that you learn from you will save thousands of similar mistakes in the future, so if you treat mistakes as learning opportunities that yield rapid improvements you should be excited by them. But if you treat them as bad things, you will make yourself and others miserable, and you won't grow.

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble.

You should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don't know what the future is going to hold.

Be wary of the arrogant intellectual who comments from the stands without having played on the field.

Principles are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values. Principles connect your values to your actions.

The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist. They assume that something that was a good investment in the recent past is still a good investment. Typically, high past returns simply imply that an asset has become more expensive and is a poorer, not better, investment.

Unlike in school, in life you don't have to come up with all the right answers. You can ask the people around you for help - or even ask them to do the things you don't do well. In other words, there is almost no reason not to succeed if you take the attitude of 1) total flexibility - good answers can come from anyone or anywhere (and in fact, as I have mentioned, there are far more good answers 'out there' than there are in you) and 2) total accountability: regardless of where the good answers come from, it's your job to find them.

Watch out for people who think it's embarrassing not to know.

To be successful, we need everyone to think independently and work through disagreement to decide what's best.

More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don't is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively

By and large, life will give you what you deserve and it doesn't give a damn what you like. So it is up to you to take full responsibility to connect what you want with what you need to do to get it, and then to do those things.

School typically doesn't prepare young people for real life - unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that's why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.

Successful people ask for the criticism of others and consider its merit.

There are far more good answers "out there" than there are in you.

Don't worry about looking good - worry about achieving your goals.

Don't be a perfectionist, because perfectionists often spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of other big, important things. Be an effective imperfectionist. Solutions that broadly work well (e.g., how people should contact each other in the event of crises) are generally better than highly specialized solutions (e.g., how each person should contact each other in the event of every conceivable crisis).

If you don't own Gold, you know neither history nor economics.

Do not feel bad about your mistakes or those of others. Love them! Remember that one: they are to be expected; two: they're the first and most essential part of the learning process; and three: feeling bad about them will prevent you from getting better.

When you're centered, your emotions are not hijacking you.

There are two main drivers of asset class returns - inflation and growth.

It is a law of nature that you must do difficult things to gain strength and power. As with working out, after a while you make the connection between doing difficult things and the benefits you get from doing them, and you come to look forward to doing these difficult things.