A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.

– Bill Gates

Inferential focus’s discipline centers on the reading of 180 publications, which range from Adhesive Age to Yankee (many of these subscriptions are trade periodicals). Such reading serves as a “radar screen” on which the anomalies, or clues of change, first appear. This reading also provides a feeling for what is normal, as one needs to know normality in order to recognize an anomaly (something that shouldn’t be happening in terms of “conventional wisdom”). When sufficient anomalies or breaks in a trend are noted, inferential focus infers that a new trend is forming.

– Bennett W. Goodspeed

The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations.

– Steven Johnson

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

– Albert Einstein

In the real world, you have to find something that you can understand that’s the best you have available. And once you’ve found the best thing, then you measure everything against that because it’s your opportunity cost. That’s the way small sums of money should be invested. And the trick, of course, is getting enough expertise that your opportunity cost — meaning your default option, which is still pretty good — is very high…. Most people aren’t going to find thousands of things that are equally good; they’re going to find a few things where one or two of them are way better than anything else they know. And the right way to think about investing is to act thinking about your best opportunity cost.

– Charlie Munger

There are two things I would never say when referring to the market: “get out” and “it’s time.” I’m not that smart, and I’m never that sure. The media like to hear people say “get in” or “get out,” but most of the time the correct action is somewhere in between. Investing is not black or white, in or out, risky or safe. The key word is “calibrate.” The amount you have invested, your allocation of capital among the various possibilities, and the riskiness of the things you own all should be calibrated along a continuum that runs from aggressive to defensive.

– Howard Marks

Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions.

-Eliud Kipchoge

We generally believe you can just see anything in markets. I mean, it’s just extraordinary what happens in markets over time. It gets sorted out eventually, but we have seen companies sell for tens of billion dollars that are worthless. And at times, we have seen things sell for…literally 20 percent or 25 percent of what they were worth. So we have seen and will continue to see everything. It’s just the nature of markets. They produce wild, wild things over time. And the trick is, occasionally, to take advantage of one of those wild things and not to get carried away when other wild things happen because the wild things create their own truth for a while.

– Warren Buffett

If you won’t attack a problem while it’s solvable and wait until it’s unfixable, you can argue that you’re so damn foolish that you deserve the problem.

– Charlie Munger