The investor's chief problem — and even his worst enemy — is likely to be himself.
Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.
Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by idiots.
Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.
The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.
A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.
People's ability to understand the factors that affect their behavior is surprisingly poor.
There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information, even when that person did not cause the bad news.
We are pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend.
Individuals are honest only to the extent that suits them, including their desire to please others.
We don't have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another.
The mind, as a defense against the volume of today's communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered to it. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience.
There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental than resisting impulse.
All humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain; to seek hope and avoid fear; to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection.
You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death — but you can convince a human.
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.
We all fool ourselves from time to time in order to keep our thoughts and beliefs consistent with what we have already done or decided.
The largest part of what we call personality is determined by how we've opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.
The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.
