Favorite Quotes
General
"If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it's probably not a chicken." - Peter Borish
"Make it work, make it right, make it fast." - Kent Beck
"The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well." - John D. Rockefeller Jr.
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." - Thomas Jefferson
"Earn your trophies at practice and pick them up at competitions."
"The better your brakes, the faster you can drive." - John Netto
Heard on the Trading Floor
"Only hedge during garden leave."
"We're gonna feel really confident until we wrap our new model around a telephone pole."
"This trader's resume says at the top 'can't go broke taking profits'... no wonder he needs a job."
"The best poker players aren't seen sitting at the table with the pros. They're at the home games cleaning out the amateurs."
"Just read that the median individual investor spends approximately six minutes on research. Double what I thought."
"The O'Hare Play: Make a huge bet and head to the airport. If you're up, go on vacation. If you're down, go on the run."
"Limit orders? Why would I limit myself?"
"Nobody is an atheist at 50x leverage."
"I didn't hire you to predict noise, just tell me why the stock goes up and down!"
"Retail loves trading news and noise."
People
Bruce Lee
"Be water, my friend."
"Simplicity is the last step of art."
"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."
Warren Buffett
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful."
"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."
"Predicting rain doesn't count. Building arks does."
"Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1."
"Beware of geeks bearing formulas."
Movies & TV
Billions
"The vultures and the hyenas always share the carcass meal."
"Being early is the same as being wrong."
"If we can't finish it, we can't start it."
"When an enemy is down on the field, you gotta finish him."
"You have about as much edge as Mister Rogers."
"Lots of guys watch Bruce Lee movies. Doesn't mean they can do karate."
Fight Club
"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."
"The things you own end up owning you."
"Most people, normal people, do just about anything to avoid a fight."
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
Forrest Gump
"My mama always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'"
"Now, Mama said there's only so much fortune a man really needs... and the rest is just for showing off."
Gladiator
"Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity!"
"The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate; it's the sand of the Coliseum. He'll bring them death, and they will love him for it."
"He sleeps so well because he is loved."
"You have a great name. He must kill your name before he kills you."
"I knew a man once who said, 'Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."
"Are you not entertained?"
"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."
"The general that became a slave. The slave that became a gladiator. The gladiator that defied an emperor."
"Today I saw a slave become more powerful than the emperor of Rome."
Good Will Hunting
"You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library."
"You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist?"
"You are bound by nothing. What are you passionate about? What do you want? I mean there are guys who work their entire life laying brick so their kids have a chance at the opportunities you have here."
"You're sitting on a winning lottery ticket and you're too much of a pussy to cash it in."
Industry
"If you really want to damn a man, teach him how to count."
"It's only an addiction if you can't afford it."
Kung Fu Panda
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."
"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."
"If you only do what you can do, you'll never be better than what you are."
"To make something special, you just have to believe it's special."
Margin Call
"I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear - a - thing. Just... silence."
"There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat."
"We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price."
"It's just money. It's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat."
Marvel Movies
"Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!"
"If you're nothing without the suit, then you shouldn't have it. OK?"
"A wise king never seeks out war. But he must always be ready for it."
"The price of freedom is high. It always has been, and it's a price I'm willing to pay."
"Avengers, assemble."
"The strong man who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows... compassion."
"With great power comes great responsibility."
"Attachment to the material is detachment from the spiritual."
"Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all... it's not about you."
Rocky Movies
"Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up."
"To beat me, he's going to have to kill me. He's gonna have to have the heart to stand in front of me and to do that, he's got to be willing to die himself."
"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that."
"Remember, the mind is your best muscle. Big arms can move rocks, but big words can move mountains."
"Time takes everybody out. Time is undefeated."
"Success is usually the culmination of controlling failure."
Shawshank Redemption
"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."
"Get Busy Living, Or Get Busy Dying."
Star Wars Movies
"Do. Or do not. There is no try."
"The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."
"No longer certain that one ever does win a war, I am."
"Difficult to see; always in motion is the future."
"Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."
"Who's the more foolish: the fool or the fool who follows him?"
"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."
Suits
"What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things."
"I don't play the odds, I play the man."
"Winners don't make excuses when the other side plays the game."
"When you're backed against the wall, break the goddamn thing down."
"I don't have dreams. I have goals."
"Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo."
"You don't send a puppy to clean up its own mess"
"That's the difference between you and me. You wanna lose small, I wanna win big."
Take Me Home Tonight
"You haven't really failed son, because you haven't really tried to succeed. So don't credit yourself as a failure, you're worse than that."
"Take a shot at something. Don't think about it too much, just, take the shot... Anywhere, everywhere, just take wild shots. Hell it's something just to hear the gun go off."
The Big Short
"They're not confessing. They're bragging."
"Look at him, that's my quant."
"Short everything that man has touched."
"Let me put it this way: I'm standing in front of a burning house, and I'm offering you fire insurance on it."
The Dark Knight
"Why do we fall, Bruce? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up again."
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
"If you're good at something, never do it for free."
The Wolf of Wall Street
"There is no such thing as bad publicity."
"You wanna know what money sounds like? Go to a trading floor on Wall street."
"You show me a pay stub for $72,000, I quit my job right now and work for you."
"Number one rule of Wall Street. Nobody — and I don't care if you're Warren Buffet or if you're Jimmy Buffet — nobody knows if a stock is going to go up, down, sideways or in circles."
"I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?"
"Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you'll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed."
"People don't buy stock; it gets sold to them. Don't ever forget that."
Books
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."
"The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent."