"From Adam Smith through John Maynard Keynes, economics had been mostly talk. At Harvard economics was talk. At MIT, Samuelson made it math."

“Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.”

“In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other.”

“Average" isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. "Average" is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small.”

“The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur—what species of impossibilities are possible.”

“Far from preventing gambler's ruin, martingale accelerates it.”

“Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods.”