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He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence.

Michael Lewis

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Michael Lewis
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: October 15
Author
Journalist
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Michael M. Lewis
Intelligence
Ignorance
People
Knowingness
Mistook
Stupidity
Ignorant

More quotes by Michael Lewis

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A tourist can't help but have a distorted opinion of a place: he meets unrepresentative people, has unrepresentative experiences, and runs around imposing upon the place the fantastic mental pictures he had in his head when he got there.
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Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.
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What's fun is watching actors of that calibre bring them to life. It's incredible. Christian Bale spent a day with the character he plays and after my year of being with him I couldn't have generated the same view of him. They have a different way of looking at people, it's fascinating to watch.
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There's something bad in everything good and something good in everything bad.
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I was gonna put him on the bus...I got tired of him talking, it was time for him to go home.
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My characters are actually usually pretty smart and admirable.
Michael Lewis
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I thought instead of a good rule for survival on Wall Street: Never agree to anything proposed on someone else's boat or you'll regret in in the morning.
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Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .
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In their leaders, advisers, and experts, people much prefer overconfidence, total certainty, to any kind of doubt.
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He's a machine for competitive balance, ... Yes, the money is in New York. Yes, the money is in his hands. But he squanders money. Thank God for it.
Michael Lewis
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In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $724,000.
Michael Lewis
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I didn't think one day something would happen that would bring me back to Wall Street to write what is essentially a sequel.
Michael Lewis
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Wall Street, with its army of brokers, analysts, and advisers funneling trillions of dollars into mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity funds, is an elaborate fraud.
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Hollywood would much prefer the author be dead, so that they can buy the book and do what they want to do with it.
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There's no point in arguing with partisan supporters. Their views are their identity. Nothing you can tell the most phlegmatic follower.
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He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.
Michael Lewis
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The incentives are still rotten, and people are still paid to do things they shouldn't be doing. The reforms did not really address the incentives, the system is still dysfunctional and there are still behavioural issues that need to be addressed.
Michael Lewis
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Like Adam, formed from clay, children are formed from the biological material of which they are made or by the hands of their parents.
Michael Lewis
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There has been this - and it's reflected in the broadcasts - this moronic use of statistics. Which has suggested to everyone who is intelligent the use of statistics is moronic.
Michael Lewis
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Time and space are absolute. Diseases are evil spirits that inhabit the body. Parallel lines never meet. The earth is the center of the universe. Children are miniature adults. At one time in history each of these beliefs was generally held to be true. Each, however, gave way to different ideas and even different world views.
Michael Lewis