Queen Elizabeth II on humility

Let us not take ourselves too seriously.  None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

~ Queen Elizabeth II

 

Kevin Duffy on the complex game of investing

This is not an easy game and it's very easy to get tricked... Sometimes we can get fooled by being right... You always have to be humble and think, 'What am I missing?' If it seems too easy then it probably is because this is a very complex game we're playing.

~ Kevin Duffy, interview with Jason Burack, 1:12:40 mark, July 28, 2022

Gary Mishuris on humility and investing

I think that you want to be humble in this business...  Base your approach on humility and then work really hard from the position that you can be wrong a lot and build that being wrong into everything: into security selection, into portfolio construction, into how you build the structure of your firm, into which clients you choose or not choose to partner with.  So humble but confident.  Humility is not the opposite of confidence.  I think you can be humble and confident at the same time.

~ Gary Mishuris, interview with Dan Ferris, Stansberry Investor Hour, 45:00 mark, July 25, 2022

Charlie Munger on success and failure

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

~ Charlie Munger

Peter Boockvar on humility and investing

We can't know it all.  Humility, at least in the investing world, should be a key characteristic because any time you get overconfident about any one thing, the market has a way of coming around and slapping you in the face.

~ Peter Boockvar, interview with Dan Ferris, Stansberry Investor Hour, 49:00 mark, February 21, 2022

Frank Herbert on the beginning of knowledge

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.

~ Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune, p. 150

Matthew McLennan on owning gold

We own gold as a hedge against the unknowable. It's almost a recognition of one's own humility in the face of that uncertainty.

~ Matthew McLennan, portfolio manager, First Eagle Investment Management, "A Time for Worry - and For Yogurt," Barron's, April 17, 2021

Friedrich Hayek on the role of the economist: "gardener, not craftsman"

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in [economics], as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible.  He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success," to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

~ Friedrich Hayek, Nobel Prize speech, December 11, 1974

Lauren C. Templeton on investing and humility

An investor who has all the answers doesn’t even understand all the questions.  I am always suspicious of investors who offer certainty to every single investment question, as I feel it harms their credibility.  In my experience, seasoned and successful investors are intellectually humble and have no problem admitting that some answers cannot be known.

~ Lauren C. Templeton, "Opinion: What would Sir John do? How to use Templeton’s 16 rules for investment success in today’s stock market," MarketWatch.com, July 27, 2020

(Legendary investor John Templeton was Lauren Templeton's great uncle.)

Jim Grant on dealing with a complex, uncertain future

The scale of government response is something new. So these things are unprecedented and so one must be very careful about drawing lessons from the past....

But for me, the lesson I have learned, or reinforced, is that … I’m going to quote a screenwriter from Hollywood... William Goldman, who I think wrote Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid, apropos of the predictability of box-office receipts, William Goldman, from his lips fell one of the great quotations pertaining to all attempts at forecasting and prognostication.

“Nobody knows anything.”

We can know tendencies. We can observe patterns of behavior. We can project. So what the events of the past, the violent events of the past two weeks, have reinforced to me is the necessary humility to stay relatively diversified, relatively liquid and to choke down any thought that begins to resemble certitude. We can’t be immobilized by our ignorance of the future.

We can understand how complex the future is and how predictably, indeed predictably, it can surprise you.

~ Jim Grant, "Nobody Knows Anything," interview with Albert Lu of Sprott Media, March 24, 2020

Jeff Deist on libertarians and humility

Being a libertarian means we don't know.  It means we don't know what's best for 320 million people in the U.S., much less 7 billion across the world.  So that, to me, involves humility.

~ Jeff Deist, "Jeff Deist on the Trouble with Libertarian Technocrats," The Tom Woods Show, January 10, 2020

Francis Domenic Seidler's words to live by

Work hard, stay humble.

~ Francis Domenic Seidler, R.I.P.

Francis "Dan" Seidler
March 7, 1968 - January 1, 2020

Neil Peart on immortality

We're only immortal for a limited time.

~ Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist, Rush, R.I.P.

Neil Peart
September 12, 1952 - January 7, 2020

Benedict Carey on humility and mental health

A humble disposition can be critical to sustaining a committed relationship. It may also nourish mental health more broadly, providing a psychological resource to shake off grudges, suffer fools patiently and forgive oneself.

~ Benedict Carey, "Be Humble, and Proudly," The New York Times, October 21, 2019

Saint Augustine on virtue and humility

Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.

~ Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine on the role of humility in success

Do you wish to rise?  Begin by descending.  You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds?  Lay first the foundation of humility.

~ Saint Augustine

J. M. Barrie on humility and life

Life is a long lesson in humility.

~ Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scottish novelist and playwright, creator of Peter Pan

George Hickenlooper on humility

I always say be humble but be firm. Humility and openness are the key to success without compromising your beliefs.

~ George Hickenlooper

Confucius on humility

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

~ Confucius

Christina Baldwin on forgiveness

Forgiveness is the act of admitting we are like other people.

~ Christina Baldwin, writer