My very first publication was an estimator - this was a statistical procedure - a kind of invention. My father got a patent and started a business; it wasn't successful, but maybe I have some of him in me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the author's early beginnings in innovation and the influence of a parent despite initial failure.
In this quote, Robert J. Shiller discusses his early venture into the world of invention through a statistical estimator that his father patented. While the business was not successful, he acknowledges the impact of his fatherβs entrepreneurial spirit on his own life, suggesting that the essence of that initial attempt and the striving for innovation lives on within him, illustrating the connection between familial influence and personal ambition.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a business workshop to inspire entrepreneurs to embrace both their successes and failures.
Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.
Speculative markets have always been vulnerable to illusion. But seeing the folly in markets provides no clear advantage in forecasting outcomes, because changes in the force of the illusion are difficult to predict.
That's the world we live in: when it comes to economics, people have emotions; it's not like chemistry or physics.
Money management has been a profession involving a lot of fakery - people saying they can beat the market, and they really can't.
We should not be focusing on quick solutions. The really important concern for policymakers everywhere is to prevent disasters - that is, the outlier events that matter the most.
If we wait until income inequality is much more severe, we will have a whole class of new superrich who will probably feel entitled to their wealth and will have the means to defend their interest. That's already gone far enough. We shouldn't let it become more extreme.
It's not how many hours you put in with a client or on a project. It's the quantity and quality of your energy - your focus and force - that determine whether that time is valuable.
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Professional players work almost every day, for hours on end, and the emphasis is on the word 'work.' It can be with a partner or it can be alone, but professional chess is always a pursuit of something new and surprising.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
I am going to spend my time today just thanking the people that played a role in my career, because I truly do believe that I was blessed by a lot of people that paths crossed mine as I went down the road in my career.
Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to [grow and] become successful. For that reason it makes sense to be grateful for adversities that help you grow, even if it is only in understanding and compassion for other's suffering.
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