Quotes & Sayings About Gains And Losses

It is true that when we take chances, we stand to lose. But it is also true that we will never win anything if we never even enter the game. Lucky people are aware of the possibility of losing, and indeed they may lose often. But since the chances they take are small, the losses tend to be small. By being willing to accept small losses they put themselves in position to make large gains. — Max Gunther

Come with me, come with me
I'll revisit the solitary mosque near hill brook,
Where men are scarce, come let's see,
I'll hold your hands as I took
The hands of my shiver strains,
Of poignant losses, of miniscule gains,
Come with me across these marsh mellows
Dividing our men into doves and scarecrows!
Come sit with the longing in these abandoned rows
where the frozen eyes burn renunciation stoves,
Let's visit the solitary mosque near hill brook; — Ashfaq Saraf

In America, we hurry-which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us ... we burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime in Europe ... What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges! — Mark Twain

The women we really love are the women who complete us, who have the qualities we can borrow and so become something nearer to whole men. Just as we complete them, of course; it's not a one-way thing. Leola and I, when romance was stripped away, were too much alike; our strengths and weaknesses were too nearly the same. Together we would have doubled our gains and our losses, but that isn't what love is. — Robertson Davies

To be compromised you need to have a stake in things, you need to have something to lose and something to gain. You have to be risking yourself, not all the time, but enough of the time to be weighing things up, principle over self-preservation, the gains, the losses. — Patrick McGuinness

On any given night the stars are endless losses or endless gains. One for the love you experience and one for the love you lose. One for the unfulfilled wish and one for the wish yet to come. — Lawren Leo

Time and again, we let the fear of loss overpower rational decision-making and often make ourselves worse off just to avoid a potential loss. Psychologists call this loss aversion, and it means we often tend to prefer avoiding losses at the expense of acquiring gains. — L. Jon Wertheim

Imagine a country where the majority of the population reaps the majority of the benefits for their hard work, creative ingenuity, and collaborative efforts. Imagine a country where corporate losses arent socialized, while gains are captured by an exclusive minority. Imagine a country run as a democracy, from the bottom up, not a plutocracy from the top down. Richard Wolff not only imagines it, but in his compelling, captivating and stunningly reasoned new book, Democracy at Work, he details how we get there from here - and why we absolutely must. — Nomi Prins

He hath disgrac'd me and hind'red me half a million; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew. — William Shakespeare

Is there anyone's life story you don't want to know?"
"Not really." His expression was unexpectedly serious. "Because people make a story of their lives.
Gains, losses, tragedy and triumph - you can tell a lot about someone simply by what they put into each
category. You can learn a lot about what you put into each category by your reaction to them. They
teach you about yourself without ever intending to do it - and they teach you a lot about life. — Michelle Sagara West

Survive long enough and you get to a far point in life where nothing else of particular interest is going to happen. After that, if you don't watch out, you can spend all your time tallying your losses and gains in endless narrative. All you love has fled or been taken away. Everything fallen from you except the possibility of jolting and unforewarned memory springing out of the dark, rushing over you with the velocity of heartbreak. May walking down the hall humming an old song - "The Girl I Left Behind Me" - or the mere fragrance of clove in spiced tea can set you weeping and howling when all you've been for weeks on end is numb. — Charles Frazier

When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than on a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities. They overestimate benefits and underestimate costs. They spin scenarios of success while overlooking the potential for mistakes and miscalculations. As a result, they pursue initiatives that are unlikely to come in on budget or on time or to deliver the expected returns - or even to be completed. In this view, people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face. I will return to this idea several times in this book - it probably contributes to an explanation of why people litigate, why they start wars, and why they open small businesses. — Daniel Kahneman

we have a system that has been working overtime to move money from the bottom and middle to the top, but the system is so inefficient that the gains to the top are far less than the losses to the middle and bottom. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

As an explanation tool, the concept of class serves, first and foremost, to clarify who gains and who losses from specific economic processes and policies and with what consequences. — Alejandro Portes

The strong are strengthened by reverses; the trouble is that the true meaning of events scores next to nothing in the match we play with men. Appearances decide our gains or losses and the points are trumpery. And a mere semblance of defeat may hopelessly checkmate us. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It's not that capitalism isn't working. It's that what we have right now is not capitalism. What we have is corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having its taxpayer-funded cake and eating it, too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains. — Arianna Huffington

THE MISCONCEPTION: You calculate what is risky or rewarding and always choose to maximize gains while minimizing losses. THE TRUTH: You depend on emotions to tell you if something is good or bad, greatly overestimate rewards, and tend to stick to your first impressions. — David McRaney

The key point is that, in principle, interest income is the change in price associated with the passage of time. Capital gains and losses are the changes in price related to changes in value - for bonds that means a change in the yield. We'll see in Chapter 4 when we get into bond taxation how well these economic principles hold up in practice. — Donald J. Smith

Churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

So, we experience life in terms of changes, we feel diminishing sensitivity to both gains and losses, and losses sting more than equivalently-sized gains feel good. — Richard H. Thaler

But he found it strange to think of these little changes of scene, the little gains, the little losses, the thing brought, the thing removed, the light given, the light taken, and all the vain offerings to the hour, — Samuel Beckett

Today, I stand firm in my own worthiness. My dignity is solid and enduring. My faith is the rock on which I build my life. I dare to risk and I risk my daring. I am large enough to survive my losses and enjoy my gains. — Julia Cameron

Why am I more cautious as I age instead of the other way around? I wonder if it's all tied in to failure. I tend to forget my gains and remember only the losses. The failures have piled up, wreaking havoc with my confidence until, as an adult, I've become afraid to take chances. — Joan Anderson

And in terms of welfare, of course, the loss suffered will be much greater than the loss in merely arithmetical terms, because the psychological losses of those who are unemployed will greatly outweigh the psychological gains of those with a slightly higher income in terms of purchasing power. — Henry Hazlitt

Life is a series of deaths and resurrections, losses and gains, pain and joy. — Torry Martin

Price fixing does not represent simply windfall gains and losses to particular groups according to whether the price happens to be set higher or lower than it would be otherwise. It represents a net lose to the economy as a whole to the extent that many transactions do not take place at all, because the mutually acceptable possibilities have been reduced. — Thomas Sowell

Whatever may be the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to that safety arising from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise. That is the faith, the experimental faith, by which we Americans have undertaken to live. — Alexander Meiklejohn

We need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble. — Erica Jong

Americans understood dating to be about investments and gains, short or long term, but we saw romance and courtship as being about losses. After all, the only worthwhile courtship involved persuading a woman who could not be persuaded, not a woman already predisposed to examine her calendar for her availability. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

If the prices rise in a continuous manner and if the borrower as a result gains a supplementary profit from the sale of the merchandise which he bought with the borrowed money, he will be disposed to pay a higher rate of interest than he would have paid in a period of stable prices; the capitalist, on the other hand, will not be disposed to lend under these conditions, unless the interest includes a compensation for the losses which the diminution in the purchasing power of money entails for creditors. — Ludwig Von Mises

So long as man is capable of Prema, Dharma will exist, do not doubt it. When that Prema is fixed on the Lord, your mental make-up will slowly and steadily undergo a revolutionary change; then, man will share in the sorrows and joys of his fellow-beings; thereafter he contacts the very source of the Bliss that is beyond the temporary gains and losses of this world. — Sathya Sai Baba

To see how transfer of antifragility works, consider two scenarios, in which the market does the same thing on average but following different paths. Path 1: market goes up 50 percent, then goes back down to erase all gains. Path 2: market does not move at all. Visibly Path 1, the more volatile, is more profitable to the managers, who can cash in their stock options. So the more jagged the route, the better it is for them. And of course society - here the retirees - has the exact opposite payoff since they finance bankers and chief executives. Retirees get less upside than downside. Society pays for the losses of the bankers, but gets no bonuses from them. If you don't see this transfer of antifragility as theft, you certainly have a problem. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Gains for all our losses
There are gains for all our losses
There are balms for all our pains
But when youth the dream departs
It takes some thing from our hearts
And never comes again
We are stronger and are better
Under manhood's sterner reign
Still we feel that some thing sweet
Followed youth with flying feet
And will never come again.
Some thing beautiful has vanished
And we sigh for it in vain
We behold it every where
On the earth and in the air
But it never comes again. — R.H. Stoddard

Any strategy that involves crossing a valley accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done. — Neal Stephenson

Asymmetric intensity of the motives to avoid losses and to achieve gains shows up almost everywhere. — Daniel Kahneman

I think one of the major results of the psychology of decision making is that people's attitudes and feelings about losses and gains are really not symmetric. So we really feel more pain when we lose $10,000 than we feel pleasure when we get $10,000. — Daniel Kahneman

I've made mistakes in business, but none so big I couldn't recover and learn from them. The more you try to change consumer behaviour, the riskier it gets. You have to work out your potential losses against the obvious gains. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

crop. Gains from trade likewise accrue to those with the power to exclude. Conflict over those powers also takes legal form. When the legal entitlements people assert are confirmed in practice, the powers and vulnerabilities of people in struggle are defined. As conflict continues, law consolidates gains and losses, solidifying relations between winners and losers. Over time, patterns emerge and inequalities can be reproduced or deepened. I illuminate that process borrowing Gunnar Myrdal's analytic framework for understanding dualist dynamics between centers and peripheries. — David Kennedy Kennedy

There is always more after the ending. Always the next morning, and the next. Always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, larges as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Everything ending is from another angle, not really an ending. — Ann Leckie

Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise. — Alexander Meiklejohn

Whatever the losses in warmth and comfort, the gains in space proved irresistible. So the development of the fireplace became one of the great breakthroughs in domestic history: they allowed people to lay boards across the beams and create a whole new world upstairs. — Bill Bryson

Sitting here, literally amongst the dead, reckoning up gains and losses, casting accounts, I have come to see gains that cannot be reckoned in terms of wealth, and losses that are more damaging than loss of a crop... I look at the River and I see the lifeblood of Egypt that has existed before we lived and that will exist after we die... Life and death, Renisenb, are not of such great account. — Agatha Christie

Every dimension of life, its gains and its losses, are reason for celebration because each of them brings us closer to wisdom and fullness of understanding. — Joan D. Chittister

How many times in your life could you have abated conflicts if you had taken the time to deliberate on your problems in quiet contemplation - for example, taking a quiet walk - to think about your capabilities and limitations, and the likely gains and losses of taking action? By removing yourself from the immediate, stressful situation, you also take out the emotion that often prompts you to make rash, thoughtless decisions. The — Sun Tzu

Researchers have found again and again that people act as though losses are from two to four times more painful than gains are pleasurable. — Chip Heath

A child is nothing like a racing car ... Souping up babies doesn't work that way. The child is what she is. There is a certainirreducible if elusive core. Pushing, pulling, stretching, and shrinking will not really change it. There may be spectacular interim results. The baby may say the alphabet before she walks, master two-times or even ten-times table at three. In the long run, however, this forced precocity tends to be irrelevant ... Whatever gains there are become unimportant. The losses can be irrevocable. — Stella Chess

All stakeholders must participate in the gains and losses of any particular situation. — Christine Lagarde

No love is lost even though the lover turns away from us or life. Within us are the people we have loved, not as they were but as we wanted them to be. As our fresh grief softens to sorrow, we suddenly discover the lover's eyes in our mirror the lover's words on our lips, even the beloved's jokes have become ours. What reality has taken, we have taken for our own. Nothing is ever lost. Layers of our being contain all that has lived for us or that we imagined. We exude the strength of our losses and our gains glow even in the dark. — Ruth H. Jacobs

Vote; it's the most important right granted to you as a citizen. But unless you are a politician, stay out of politics because your gains will not change anything and your losses will only make you waste your time and many friendships. — Ben Tolosa

While no one wishes to incur losses, you couldn't prove it from an examination of the behavior of most investors and speculators. The speculative urge that lies within most of us is strong; the prospect of a free lunch can be compelling, especially when others have already seemingly partaken. It can be hard to concentrate on potential losses while others are greedily reaching for gains and your broker is on the phone offering shares in the latest "hot" initial public offering. Yet the avoidance of loss is the surest way to ensure a profitable outcome. — Seth Klarman

Let me persuade you then
oh, do let me persuade you," said the child, "to think no more of gains or losses, and to try no fortune but the fortune we pursue together. — Charles Dickens

Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe - comfort. In America, we hurry - which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime in Europe. When — Mark Twain

When people think of the outcomes of their decisions, they think much more short term than that. They think in terms of gains and losses. — Daniel Kahneman

Our lives are full of separations that shake us up, force us to attend to our emotional selves and to learn new ways of being in the world. Although many of our losses are painful, they encourage our gains. The lesson life is trying to teach us is that, regardless of the challenges and changes in the physical world, we will abide in peace by aligning ourselves with our inner changelessness. The power of God in us is more than equal to any moment-no matter what it brings. We live in a loving, supportive universe that is always saying yes to us. — Susan L. Taylor

There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again. — Richard Henry Stoddard

Celebrating the Eucharist requires that we stand in this world accepting our co-responsibility for the evil that surrounds and pervades us. As long as we remain stuck in our complaints about the terrible times in which we live and the terrible situations we have to bear and the terrible fate we have to suffer, we can never come to contrition. And contrition can grow only out of a contrite heart. When our losses are pure fate, our gains are pure luck! Fate does not lead to contrition, nor luck to gratitude. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A good leader must have the wisdom to know when a pursuit is no longer worthy of being pursued - a time when the losses of the present must be accepted - and cut - to preserve the gains and providence of the future. — A.J. Darkholme

All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides. — Michael Mandelbaum

Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It's part of letting their actions have weight. It's part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just being a flurry of events. It's part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool. — Francis Spufford