Speculation Quotes - Page 13

• No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Wall, Decision, Choices

  John Kenneth Galbraith (1955). “The great crash, 1929”

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• The imagination of a eunuch dwells more and longer upon the material of love than that of man or woman ... supplying, so far as he can, by speculation, the place of pleasures he can no longer enjoy.

  John Quincy Adams

  Love, Men, Imagination

  John Quincy Adams (1876). “Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848”, p.353

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• Near the top of the market, investors are extraordinarily optimistic because they've seen mostly higher prices for a year or two. The sell-offs witnessed during that span were usually brief. Even when they were severe, the market bounced back quickly and always rose to loftier levels. At the top, optimism is king, speculation is running wild, stocks carry high price/earnings ratios, and liquidity has evaporated. A small rise in interest rates can easily be the catalyst for triggering a bear market at that point.

  Martin Zweig

  Running, Kings, Optimistic

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• If a powerful and benevolent spirit has shaped the destiny of this world, we can better discover that destiny from the words that have gathered up the heart's desire of the world, than from historical records, or from speculation, wherein the heart withers.

  William Butler Yeats

  Powerful, Heart, Destiny

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran, George Bornstein (2007). “The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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• When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophy, Silly, Law

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble - until the day of disaster.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Sea, Law, Wonderful

  "Galbraith on Crashes, Japan and Walking Sticks" by Ben Laurance and William Keegan, The Observer, June 21, 1998.

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• If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Philosophical, People, Liberty

  Stephen Jay Gould (1992). “Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History”, p.267, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In love as in speculation there is much filth; in love also, people think only of their own gratification; yet without love there would be no life, and the world would come to an end.

  Emile Zola

  Love, Thinking, People

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• speculation is carried on in safety, but, when it comes to action, fear causes failure.

  Thucydides

  Safety, Causes, Action

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.66, Simon and Schuster

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• There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Awful, Common, Great Depression

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2017). “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, p.212, Princeton University Press

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• Faith's speculations to the worst and hardest, in point of resolution, are sweet.

  Samuel Rutherford

  Sweet, Resolution, Worst

  Samuel Rutherford (1845). “The Trial and Triumph of Faith”, p.111

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• In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.

  William Hazlitt

  Views, Water, Mind

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.2095, Delphi Classics

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• We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.

  Samuel Johnson

  Intellectual, Perception, Matter

  'The Lives of the English Poets' (1779-81) 'Milton'

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• Speculation, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Vacuums

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• From the moment a New Yorker is confronted with almost any large city of Europe, it is impossible for him to pretend to himself that his own city is anything other than an unscrupulous real-estate speculation

  Edmund Wilson

  Real, Europe, Cities

  Edmund Wilson (1966). “Europe without Baedeker: sketches among the ruins of Italy, Greece and England, together with, Notes from a European diary, 1963-1964”, Vintage

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• I'm not against (bull fighting). Some nations like to see blood, and some like to see their victims suffer from speculation... They kill the bull very quick. Wall Street lets you live and suffer.

  Will Rogers

  Wall, Fighting, Blood

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• At the beginning God said: "Let there be light," and light was, and light is, and light shall be. So Christianity is rolling on, and it is going to warm all nations, and all nations are to bask in its light. Men may shut the window-blinds so they cannot see it, or they may smoke the pipe of speculation until they are shadowed under their own vaporing; but the Lord God is a sun!

  Thomas De Witt Talmage

  Men, Light, Rolling

  Thomas De Witt Talmage (1901). “Sin: A Series of Popular Discourses”

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• Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street. When you read contemporary accounts of booms or panics, the one thing that strikes you most forcibly is how little either stock speculation or stock speculators today differ from yesterday. The game does not change and neither does human nature.

  Edwin Lefevre

  Wall, Games, Indulge In

  Edwin Lefèvre (2004). “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator”, p.165, John Wiley & Sons

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• In the middle classes the gifted son of a family is always the poorest -- usually a writer or artist with no sense for speculation -- and in a family of peasants, where the average comfort is just over penury, the gifted son sinks also, and is soon a tramp on the roadside.

  John Millington Synge

  Family, Son, Artist

  John Millington Synge (2008). “The Complete Works of J. M. Synge”, p.235, Wordsworth Editions

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• Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits, the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, the Banque Royale of 1719-20, the railway speculation of the 1840s, the great crash of 1929.

  James Buchan

  Fall, Dust, Bulls

  "Greed and amnesia: the devils in financial history". www.theguardian.com. October 10, 2008.

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• Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in process of construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.

  Karl Marx

  House, Construction, Process

  Karl Marx (1997). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: .. Karl Marx: Capital vol.II”

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• Now let the matter rest as it is, or as it may be, what avail useless speculations? What is to occur we do not know; still in so far we do! what God wills!

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Useless, May, Matter

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1866). “The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1769-1791)”, p.131

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• Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

  Herbert Spencer

  Reality, Criticism, Negative

  Herbert Spencer (1920). “Synthetic Philosophy ...: First principles. 1920. [v.2-3] The principles of biology. v.1, rev. & enl. ed., 1921”

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• Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands.

  Camille Paglia

  Philosophical, Thinking, Hands

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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• If we choose a weak and foolish speculation as a primary textbook illustration (falsely assuming that the tale possesses a weight of history and a sanction of evidence), then we are in for trouble - as critics properly nail the particular weakness, and then assume that the whole theory must be in danger if supporters choose such a fatuous case as a primary illustration.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Illustration, Weakness, Nails

  Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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