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

William Poundstone Literature See all quotes by William Poundstone →

React to this quote

More by William Poundstone

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

“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.”

“The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.”

Resonant Thoughts

"An intellectual dapperling of these times boasts chiefly of his irresistible perspicacity, his “dwelling in the daylight of truth,” and so forth; which, on examination, turns out to be a dwelling in t…"

— Thomas Carlyle

Philosophy1795–1881

#time

"I’ve always liked working on stories that combine people who are relatable with something insane. … The most exciting thing for me is crossing that bridge between something we know is real and somethi…"

— J. J. Abrams

Literature1966

#knowledge

"I have always said that, with any sculpture, you have to be able to say, 'although this is not a ready-made, it could be one'. That's what a sculpture has to look like. It must have a certain relation…"

— Isa Genzken

Art1948

#art

"Another characteristic of the A.R.F.'s "Western"-dependent strategy is its complete disregard for the need to transfer the Armenian armed struggle to the historic Armenian homeland, the need to build …"

— Monte Melkonian

1957–1993

#life