Peter Bernstein Quotes & Sayings

If the satisfaction to be derived from each successive increase in wealth is smaller than the satisfaction derived from the previous increase in wealth, then the disutility caused by a loss will always exceed the positive utility provided by a gain of equal size. — Peter L. Bernstein

The information you have is not the information you want. The information you want is not the information you need. The information you need is not the information you can obtain. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay — Peter L. Bernstein

The prospect of getting rich is highly motivating, and few people get rich without taking a gamble. — Peter L. Bernstein

The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature. — Peter L. Bernstein

Gambling has held human beings in thrall for millennia. It has been engaged in everywhere, from the dregs of society to the most respectable circles. — Peter L. Bernstein

What if I am wrong? Any rational investment plan has to start with that question. — Peter L. Bernstein

As the worldly philosophers of the past affirmed, the goal of economics is to improve the way society functions. In The New Financial Order, Robert Shiller joins this proud tradition by directing his brilliant economic skills toward the creation of financial institutions designed to reduce the risks an unknown future visits on most members of our society and others. Shiller's imaginative and compelling analysis will appeal to all readers who share his passion for initiating not only a richer, but a better, century. — Peter L. Bernstein

If they had kept quiet, and lain low for a time, things might have fizzled out as another unreal Wortstreist, blown up by a few ambitious authors of the party press. As it was, they decided to counter-attack the noisy, irrepressible outsiders--foreigners, to boot--and so forced a reluctant leadership to turn its full, slow, wrath against them; and against Bernstein too. For the most practical manifestation of revisionism was indiscipline and disobedience, a door opened to centrifugal forces of bourgeois influence. — John Peter Nettl

The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome. — Peter L. Bernstein

The word 'risk' derives from the early Italian risicare, which means 'to dare'. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depend on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about. And that story helps define what it means to be a human being. — Peter L. Bernstein

The Gods are unkind and deny us knowledge of what the future holds — Peter L. Bernstein