Latest Michael Lewis Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• If you have a patient in a doctor's office who's just been told they have terminal cancer but there's this operation they could perform right now that might save their lives. ... They have a 90 percent chance of surviving the operation — if you tell them that, they respond one way. If you tell them ... that they have a 10 percent chance of being killed by the operation, they are about three times less likely to have the operation.

  Michael Lewis

  Cancer, Doctors, Office

  Source: www.npr.org

• People in the voting booth are not purely rational creatures any more than they're purely rational creatures outside the voting booth.

  Michael Lewis

  People, Voting, Rational

  Source: www.cbc.ca

• We aren't natural statisticians. What we are is natural storytelling machines. And so what we do after we have the facts in hand is build a story to explain the facts.

  Michael Lewis

  Hands, Stories, Facts

  Source: www.cbc.ca

• The thing I'm most afraid of is what happens when these people who voted for Donald Trump realize he's not going to do anything for them and that he's not an antidote to what ails them. His whole movement runs on anger, and if it doesn't have anger, it doesn't go anywhere.

  Michael Lewis

  Running, People, Movement

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• The idea that it's smart to allow Wall Street firms, with this "too big to fail" imprimatur, to become hedge funds again - it's unconscionable. You're essentially saying we're going to take some elites in our society and let them roll the bones in the marketplace, and if it works out they get rich, and if it doesn't work out the taxpayer comes in again. That seems absolutely crazy to me. That seems to be where they're headed. I mean, maybe they're not and I'm wrong. Maybe they'll do sensible things. It's hard to know! There doesn't seem to be a plan.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, Crazy, Smart

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• Just because you've been successful and just because you've disrupted an environment, doesn't mean you're a role model or that you actually have anything to teach anybody. There's an awful lot of luck and accident in the world, and maybe you were just on the receiving end of that.

  Michael Lewis

  Mean, Successful, Role Models

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• My characters are actually usually pretty smart and admirable.

  Michael Lewis

  Smart, Character, Admirable

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• In Wall Street now, you have to hide what you're doing. It's more fun when you don't have to do that. But I don't think its sense of purpose has changed at all.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, Fun, Thinking

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• If you're the kind of kid who thinks that all that's important in life is making money, Wall Street is probably still the place to go, especially now that Trump's elected.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, Kids, Thinking

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• I was really interested in a pretty simple thing: what happens when someone tries to introduce moral considerations into Wall Street, what happens when someone wants to actually demand of himself and those who work with him that what they do is not just profitable but good and useful.

  Michael Lewis

  Wall, Simple, Trying

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• Donald Trump got almost 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton! He happened to get more in some of the right places. It was just like one of those things where a stock going up and people impose a false sense of order on it. It's really more intellectually honestly viewed as a disorderly process.

  Michael Lewis

  Order, People, Vote

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• I always find with my stories that the way they start is that I just get so interested in a person that I'm compelled to go back to them over and over until I learn more and more about them, without even quite thinking it's material for a book.

  Michael Lewis

  Book, Thinking, Way

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable.

  Michael Lewis

  People, Way, Ifs

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• You can anchor the mind into answering a question a certain way by giving them a totally unrelated piece of information dropped before.

  Michael Lewis

  Anchors, Giving, Mind

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• I'd say part of the appeal of Trump is that he's presenting himself as a totally certain, infallible person.

  Michael Lewis

  Certain, Appeals, Trump

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• In their leaders, advisers, and experts, people much prefer overconfidence, total certainty, to any kind of doubt.

  Michael Lewis

  People, Leader, Doubt

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• People dislike uncertainty so much that they will impose an order on it even when it doesn't exist.

  Michael Lewis

  Order, People, Uncertainty

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• People don't like uncertainty, and their minds are tools for making sense of the world, even when the world is senseless.

  Michael Lewis

  People, Mind, Tools

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

• The institutions at the centre of capitalism are bigger than they've ever been, the pay is much greater, the ability of society to get its arms around it is much less. The political clout of the financial class is unbelievable. I'd say the story is darker than when I was there. When I was there it felt like a comedy - and now it feels more like a tragedy.

  Michael Lewis

  Class, Political, Tragedy

  "The Big Short: author Michael Lewis on 'betting on Armageddon' during the global financial crisis; making of star-studded new film". Interview with Hayden Cooper, www.abc.net.au. January 14, 2016.

• You could argue the banks are much better capitalised than they were going into the crisis, and everyone's in a much more vigilant state because they still remember the crisis.

  Michael Lewis

  Arguing, Remember, States

  "The Big Short: author Michael Lewis on 'betting on Armageddon' during the global financial crisis; making of star-studded new film". Interview with Hayden Cooper, www.abc.net.au. January 14, 2016.

• The incentives are still rotten, and people are still paid to do things they shouldn't be doing. The reforms did not really address the incentives, the system is still dysfunctional and there are still behavioural issues that need to be addressed.

  Michael Lewis

  Issues, People, Reform

  "The Big Short: author Michael Lewis on 'betting on Armageddon' during the global financial crisis; making of star-studded new film". Interview with Hayden Cooper, www.abc.net.au. January 14, 2016.

• What's fun is watching actors of that calibre bring them to life. It's incredible. Christian Bale spent a day with the character he plays and after my year of being with him I couldn't have generated the same view of him. They have a different way of looking at people, it's fascinating to watch.

  Michael Lewis

  Christian, Fun, Character

  "The Big Short: author Michael Lewis on 'betting on Armageddon' during the global financial crisis; making of star-studded new film". Interview with Hayden Cooper, www.abc.net.au. January 14, 2016.

• People were paid lots of money to make stupid decisions, people in big banks, and when people are paid to be stupid they'll be stupid. The question was, did they know they were being stupid or were they just stupid? I think you need to take it on a case by case basis. There was some sinister activity, but I think by and by it was people being incentivised to do the wrong thing.

  Michael Lewis

  Stupid, Thinking, People

  "The Big Short: author Michael Lewis on 'betting on Armageddon' during the global financial crisis; making of star-studded new film". Interview with Hayden Cooper, www.abc.net.au. January 14, 2016.

• Hollywood would much prefer the author be dead, so that they can buy the book and do what they want to do with it.

  Michael Lewis

  Book, Hollywood, Want

  "The Big Short: author Michael Lewis on 'betting on Armageddon' during the global financial crisis; making of star-studded new film". Interview with Hayden Cooper, www.abc.net.au. January 14, 2016.

• When an American declares bankruptcy, when he hits bottom, he can reinvent himself. There's a story he can tell. We tolerate reinvention. We encourage reinvention. That's what this country has that Europe does not. It's not just a crisis; it's an opportunity.

  Michael Lewis

  Country, Opportunity, Europe

  "Michael Lewis’ 'Boomerang': 'Money Thrown Out in Hope, Coming Back in Anger'". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. October 21, 2011.