Category: Notes

The formula for successful entry is the same for all industries: compete asymmetrically. This means introduce products which change the basis of competition and deter competitive responses by making your goals dissimilar from those of the incumbents. This is classic “ju-jitsu” of disruptive competition.

– Horace Dediu

CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging indicators of bad news. In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.

– Andy Grove

You own the cheap stock, it becomes the target of a deal, you do the arbitrage, they screw up the deal, it becomes a bankruptcy, and you play that. We don’t forget the companies we trade in. We try to watch the companies over all parts of that cycle. We watch the acquisitions, we think about whether they’re sensible, and we don’t lose track.

– Michael Price, The Vulture Investors

All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.

– Charlie Munger

Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.

– William Zinsser, On Writing Well

If all your colleagues have tried to demonstrate that something’s true and failed, it might be because that thing is not true.

– Richard Feynman

Nations that forget their history lack the power to create it.

– Narendra Modi

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.

– Thomas Edison

Voltaire thought that history is the record of the crimes and absurdities of mankind. I thought that was a very unworthy definition. I should say history is the record of the activities of mankind and it has two sides — one is the crimes and absurdities and the other is the contributions to civilization, the lasting developments which enabled each generation to proceed with a larger heritage than the one before. And that to me is the meaning of history.

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