Against the Odds - Quotations

Against the Odds: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Peter L. Bernstein. 1998. ISBN 978-0471295631

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

John Maynard Keynes
Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

Amos Tversky
Probably the most significant and pervasive characteristic of the human pleasure machine is that people are much more sensitive to negative than to positive stimuli ... think about how well you feel today, and then try to imagine how much better you could feel ... there are a few things that would make you feel better, but the number of things that would make you feel worse is unbounded.

Amos Tversky
The major driving force is loss aversion. It is not so much that people hate uncertainty – but rather, they hate losing.