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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.

Michael Lewis

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Michael Lewis
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: October 15
Author
Journalist
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Michael M. Lewis
Running
Experiences
Tourist
Place
Mental
Distorted
Around
Travel
Tourists
People
Head
Imposing
Opinion
Meets
Help
Runs
Upon
Fantastic
Helping
Pictures

More quotes by Michael Lewis

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When an American declares bankruptcy, when he hits bottom, he can reinvent himself. There's a story he can tell. We tolerate reinvention. We encourage reinvention. That's what this country has that Europe does not. It's not just a crisis it's an opportunity.
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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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Even as late as the summer of 2006, as home prices began to fall, it took a certain kind of person to see the ugly facts and react to them-to discern, in the profile of the beautiful young lady, the face of an old witch.
Michael Lewis
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My judgement is not good when I am on a book tour. I am not thinking about it that much. What happens is I will go back home. I have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old and a wife who is now taking care of them who is wondering where her husband is.
Michael Lewis
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All that was clear that the profits to be had from smart people making complicated bets overwhelmed anything that could be had from servicing customers, or allocating capital to productive enterprise.
Michael Lewis
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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.
Michael Lewis
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People dislike uncertainty so much that they will impose an order on it even when it doesn't exist.
Michael Lewis
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What happens when we acknowledge the sovereignty and power of God without trusting in His goodness and faithfulness? A pitcher who saw God's power behind his extremely unlikely rise to the big leagues wondered if, at any difficulty he encountered there, God might be taking his ability away.
Michael Lewis
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Yet another hedge fund manager explained Icelandic banking to me this way: you have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that each is worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets.
Michael Lewis
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He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.
Michael Lewis
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A vast industry of stockbrokers, financial planners, and investment advisers skims a fortune for themselves off the top in exchange for passing their clients' money on to people who, as a whole, cannot possibly outperform the market.
Michael Lewis
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Looking into it a bit, Jamie found that the model used by Wall Street to price LEAPs, the Black-Scholes option pricing model, made some strange assumptions.
Michael Lewis
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All of a sudden the market is all about algos and routers.
Michael Lewis
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When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable.
Michael Lewis
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Just because you've been successful and just because you've disrupted an environment, doesn't mean you're a role model or that you actually have anything to teach anybody. There's an awful lot of luck and accident in the world, and maybe you were just on the receiving end of that.
Michael Lewis
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Icelandic people are inbred. And they have a sense of themselves as genetically special, and a history of risk-taking because they make their living on the high seas fishing. Assets generally rose in value during this period, and so it looked like they actually knew what they were doing.
Michael Lewis
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Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.
Michael Lewis
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If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it.
Michael Lewis
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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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As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off.
Michael Lewis