Models of My Life

How does one age, gradually replacing action by reflection?

It would seem to me that every scientist would have to think so, for the whole purpose of science is to find meaningful simplicity in the midst of disorderly complexity.

My training as an economist has been of help in one important way: It convinced me that the only information that is of value in a financial market is information that other people don’t have. This means that I don’t have to pay daily, or even monthly, attention to the stock market, since it tells me nothing about whether I should buy or sell. Henc

he had an unerring instinct for important (and difficult) problems.

If the quality of a research problem rests on the importance of the questions it addresses and the availability of ideas and techniques that hold out a promise of progress, then the study of mind is a most promising research domain.

A still heavier obligation, not always acknowledged, is to leave to future generations as wide and interesting a range of options as our generation inherited from our forebears.

Everything had to be explored, tested, before it could be accepted or rejected.

From observing Elliott Smith I learned that being a decent person is terribly important, but being a “nice guy” is not important at all.

We could have no comparative advantage in the liberal subjects in competition with the Ivy League schools unless we offered something different and arguably better than they did. If we had no comparative advantage, we would not achieve quality; and if we did not achieve quality, we should not be in the business.