James Surowiecki Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“Pop music thrives on repetition. You know a song's a hit when you've heard it so often that you'll be happy never to hear it again.”

“Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.”

“In the business world, bad news is usually good news - for somebody else.”

“Medical tourism can be considered a kind of import: instead of the product coming to the consumer, as it does with cars or sneakers, the consumer is going to the product.”

“I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.”

“When Americans think of college these days, the first word that often comes to mind is 'debt.' And from 'debt' it's just a short hop to other unpleasant words, like 'payola,' 'kickback,' and 'bribery.'”

“Although oil is a commodity, it's still not a commodity like coffee, which, thank God, we will have with us always. At some point the oil will run out.”

“You can't fuel real economic growth with indiscriminate credit. You can only fuel it with well-allocated, long-term investment.”

“The desire for reinvention seems to arise most often when companies hear the siren call of synergy and start to expand beyond their core businesses.”

“Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers to the future well-being of their families.”