There's quite a bit of evidence that even professionals don't show any ability to pick stocks or to predict market rollbacks. Most of the people we identify as skilled based on returns have probably just been lucky.

After costs, only the top 3% of managers produce a return that indicates they have sufficient skill to just cover their costs, which means that going forward, and despite extraordinary past returns, even the top performers are expected to be only as good as a low-cost passive index fund. The other 97% can be expected to do worse.

The investors who generate big returns over five years, the guys they write books about, are supposed to keep winning, right? Well, they don't.

Everybody wants the world to be a better place, and some think that government actions can bring that about. But they don't take into consideration that government actions can often do more harm than good.

I grew up in Chillum Heights in the Washington, D.C. area., and it was never a garden spot. When guys go, 'Hey, when I grew up, my neighborhood was tough, and it was this and that'... the reality is that it was just a terribly sad place. And thank God, I was able to escape it.

You see people in Hollywood trying to make blockbuster after blockbuster, but it's not possible. There's some god up there saying, 'You will fail now.' But I suppose that's true of us all.

It has been religious people, often within the organized church, who have been the most critical of and even hostile to my relationship with God.

One positive command he gave us: You shall love and honor your emperor. In every congregation a prayer must be said for the czar's health, or the chief of police would close the synagogue.