Hyman Minsky on success

Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure.

~ Hyman Minsky

Fortune cookie on taking risks

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

~ fortune cookie

John McEnroe on defeat

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose.

~ John McEnroe

Warren Buffett on bankruptcy

My partner, Charlie, says there's only three ways that a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies and leverage.  

Now the truth is — the first two he just added because they started with L — it’s leverage.

~ Warren Buffett

Nassim Taleb on evolution

How does evolution happen?  Not by convincing people, but by replacing them with better people.

~ Nassim Taleb, "Why Correlation is Unreliable," Greenwhich Economic Forum, 10:45 mark, April 2022

Charlie Munger on mistakes

I like people admitting  they were complete horses' asses.  I know I'll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes.  This is a wonderful trick to learn.

~ Charlie Munger 

Henry Ward Beecher on failure

One's best success comes after his greatest disappointments.

~ Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman and writer

Thomas Edison on persistence

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

~ Thomas Edison

Will Rogers on good judgment

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. 

~ Will Rogers

Charlie Munger on success and failure

It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.

~ Charlie Munger

The Christophers: "Winning isn't everything

Winning isn't Everything

Few people knew more about winning than the late Chuck Noll, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1969 to 1991.  The team won four Super Bowls under his leadership.  But people tend to forget that in each of his first three years, Noll lost more games than he won.  In fact, one year, he lost 13 of 14 games.

Before the 1979 Super Bowl, Noll observed, "If you structure your life on winning every time, then you are in for a lot of frustration."

Yet, isn't it true that many of us structure our lives on winning - winning the race, winning the girl or guy, winning the contract?  And when we don't win, we are left with the hollow feeling of those who have set impossible goals.

Yes, there is more to life than winning.  What we are called to do is "run with perseverance the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1).  In that, everyone can be a winner, regardless of the order of the finish.

~ The Christophers, Three Minutes a Day, Volume 56 (2021)

Denis Waitley on overcoming adversity

Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker.  Failure is delay, not defeat.  It is a temporary detour, not a dead end.  Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

~ Denis Waitley

(Congratulations, Annemiek van Vleuten, on one of the most incredible comebacks in sports.  After a horrific crash in the 2016 Rio Olympics, she won the gold medal in the women's individual time trial in Toyko at the age of 38.)

Tokyo Olympics - July 28, 2021

Thomas Edison on making mistakes

I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

~ Thomas Edison

Michael Weeks on resilience and financial ruin

Resilience is simply not a matter of size.  A man with $100 million can lose his fortune just as easily as the man with $100 thousand.  There are many roads to ruin, open to rich and poor alike.  Through the ages, fortunes both great and small have succumbed to war, inflation, and confiscation, while many more are squandered each year by those who are overconfident, overleveraged, envious, or simply living beyond their means.

~ Michael Weeks, "Searching for Resilience," Edelweiss Journal, July 7, 2021

Henry Ford on failure

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. 

~ Henry Ford

Kevin Duffy on waiting for the tide to go out to pick winners

When it comes to business success, the lines are blurred, making it all the more difficult to identify entrepreneurs as worthy stewards of our capital.  Is Elon Musk a classic market entrepreneur or shameless political capitalist?  Is Warren Buffett’s everyone’s-favorite-grandfather image beyond reproach?

One suggestion is to wait for the tide to go out and see who’s been swimming naked.  Surviving a hostile environment is one of the most reliable predictors of future success.  At the end of 1999, Jeff Bezos was the leader in a crowded race for e-commerce gold.  After the dot-com bust, his stock price was 95% lower, but he had the field all to himself.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Trouble With Conformity," The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 4, November 2, 2020

December 27, 1999

Kevin Duffy on the value of failure

Culling the herd is the purpose of bear markets, recessions, inflations, pandemics, shutdowns, shakeouts, technological disruption, changing consumer tastes, etc.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Trouble With Conformity," The Coffee Can Portfolio, p. 4, November 2, 2020

Jim Grant on the empirical case for a lassiez faire response to recessions

The case for better, more robust expansions (followed, of necessity, by lustier, more dynamic contractions) is based on the conviction that failure is an integral part of the capitalist cycle.  The argument is advanced in this chapter without the aid of an econometric model.  Instead, the principal exhibits are historical: America and Japan in both the early 1920s and the early 1990s.  In each era, inflation of one kind or another demanded a public-policy response.  The most successful policy was that of the United States in the early 1920s: a short, sharp depression.  The least successful policy was that of Japan in the early and mid-1990s: a chronic, lingering recession.

~ Jim Grant, The Trouble With Prosperity, p. 117

Eddie Van Halen on making mistakes

If you make a mistake, try to do it twice and smile.  Because that way people think you meant it.

~ Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen
1955-2020

Frank Borman on bankruptcy

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.

~ Frank Borman, U.S. Air Force colonel