Welcome to our collection of quotes by George Soros. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for George Soros
George Soros (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-born American billionaire investor and philanthropist. As of March 2021, he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, of which $15 billion have already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune, making him the "most generous giver" (in terms of percentage of net worth) according to Forbes.
Born in Budapest to a non-observant Jewish family, Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary and moved to the United Kingdom in 1947. He studied at the London School of Economics and was awarded a BSc in philosophy in 1951, and then a Master of Science degree, also in philosophy, in 1954.
Soros began his business career by taking various jobs at merchant banks in the United Kingdom and then the United States, before starting his first hedge fund, Double Eagle, in 1969. Profits from his first fund furnished the seed money to start Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund, in 1970. Double Eagle was renamed to Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised. At its founding, Quantum Fund had $12 million in assets under management, and as of 2011 it had $25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth.
Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated the General Theory of Reflexivity for capital markets, which he says renders a clear picture of asset bubbles and fundamental/market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks.
Soros is a supporter of progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations. Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion. He influenced the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to the Central European University in his Hungarian hometown.
His extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists". The New York Times reported in October 2018 that "conspiracy theories about him have gone mainstream, to nearly every corner of the Republican Party". Numerous American conservatives have promoted false claims that characterize Soros as a singularly dangerous "puppet master" behind many alleged global plots. Conspiracy theories targeting Soros, who is of Jewish descent, have often been described as antisemitic.
The assumption of perfect knowledge is very far from reality a lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional.
I would prefer not to be involved in party politics.
Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret.
Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.
It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong.
We are trying to make the world a better place, but that is not necessarily what we accomplish. Many of the problems which preoccupy us are basically insoluble.
I called gold the ultimate bubble, which means it may go higher. But it's certainly not safe and it's not going to last forever.
If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy.
Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states.
If the bubbles contain a misconception, as they always do, then it can't be maintained forever.
Everybody says that I have a lot of power. But what does that power consist of?... Can I influence governments? I am beginning to be able to... (1995).
The hardest thing to judge is what level of risk is safe.
I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong.
I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong...I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.
My main concern is with the world order.
The world order needs a major overhaul.
My approach works not by making valid predictions but by allowing me to correct false ones.
It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.
It is dangerous to build systemic reforms on a close association with one particular government. Systemic reforms need broad public participation and support. That is what makes them irreversible.
If we care about universal principles such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law, we cannot leave them to the care of market forces; we must establish some other institutions to safeguard them.
What works for Germany can't work for the rest of Europe: No country can run a chronic surplus without others running deficits.
Once a trend is established it tends to persist and to run it's full course.
The scope for improvement is infinite, precisely because perfection is unattainable.
Every bubble has two components: something -- some real trend, and a misconception about that trend.
Financial markets ... resent any kind of government interference but they hold a belief deep down that if conditions get really rough the authorities will step in.
The financial markets play an active role in determining what's going to happen, how the economy is going to function.
As an anonymous participant in financial markets, I never had to weigh the social consequences of my actions ... I felt justified in ignoring them on the grounds that I was playing by the rules.
I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel.
The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself.
The concept of a general equilibrium has no relevance to the real world (in other words, classical economics is an exercise in futility).
Market prices are always wrong in the sense that they present a biased view of the future.
The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposite position. I assume that markets are always wrong.
Market prices are always wrong.
Start by assuming the market is always wrong, so if you copy everybody else on Wall Street, you're doomed to do poorly.
I rely a great deal on animal instincts.
I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or take flight. When I make the decision, the backache goes away.
There is no point in being confident and having a small position.
Any central bank should only be in charge of liquidity. Solvency is a matter for the treasury.
My conceptual framework, which basically emphasizes the importance of misconceptions, makes me extremely critical of my own decisions. I know that I am bound to be wrong, and therefore am more likely to correct my own mistakes.
Discount the obvious, bet on the unexpected.
Everything adds up to a major crisis. Humanity is faced with a global energy crisis ... The core of the crisis lies in the increasing shortage of oil.
I am not well qualified to criticize the theory of rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis because as a market participant I considered them so unrealistic that I never bothered to study them.
Esperanto was a very useful language, because wherever you went, you found someone to speak with.
I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful -- but also very harmful to our society.
A global economy is characterized not only by the free movement of goods and services but, more important, by the free movement of ideas and of capital.
Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention, and I wouldn't underestimate the value of that. But they're not designed to take care of social needs.
The only thing that could hurt me is if my success encouraged me to return to my childhood fantasies of omnipotence -- but that is not likely to happen as long as I remain engaged in the financial markets, because they constantly remind me of my limitations.
When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold.
This crisis has the potential to be a lot worse than Lehman Brothers.
The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.
The dark comes before dawn. The financial markets are under great pressure because of the lack of leadership during the transition period.
Economic history is a never-ending series of episodes based on falsehoods and lies, not truths. It represents the path to big money. The object is to recognize the trend whose premise is false, ride that trend and step off before it is discredited.
At present, the developed countries condescend to the developing ones.
To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride.
I don't use my money to gain political influence for my private interests, which is what many rich people do, and what, in a sense, market fundamentalism does, because it is in the interests of people who have a lot of money to have as little taxes as possible.
I have made it a principle to give advice that does not serve my personal interest but rather the common interests.
Playing by the rules, one does the best he can, irrespective of the social consequences. Whereas in making the rules, people ought to be concerned with the social consequences and not with their personal interests.
If I had to sum up my practical skills, I would use one word: survival. And operating a hedge fund utilized my training in survival to the fullest.
When you sell options, you get paid for assuming risk. That can be a profitable business, but it does not mix well with the risks inherent in a leveraged portfolio.
I fancied myself as some kind of god or an economic reformer like Keynes.
As I discovered, there is a great deal of similarity between a boom-bust process in the financial markets and the rise and fall of the Soviet system.
Studying economics is not a good preparation for dealing with it.
However, even a strong government can't perform miracles. It needs money from the taxpayers.
Fundamental analysis seeks to establish how underlying values are reflected in stock prices, whereas the theory of reflexivity shows how stock prices can influence underlying values.
Taking this view, it is possible to see financial markets as a laboratory for testing hypotheses, albeit not strictly scientific ones. The truth is, successful investing is a kind of alchemy.
To be successful, you need leisure. You need time hanging heavily on your hands.
There is a well-established conviction that the central banks always do what is necessary to keep the system going and then afterwards you then take care of the legal aspects. In a crisis, you simply do not have time to think about such concerns for too long.
The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.
If the choice is between cooking alive and wasting money unnecessarily I would rather waste some money, because long before we cook we are going to kill each other if we don't deal with climate change.
Of course, speculation will always make a crisis worse. If there is a weak point, it will expose it.
We can speak of the triumph of capitalism in the world, but we cannot yet speak about the triumph of democracy. There is a serious mismatch between the political and the economic conditions that prevail in the world today.
The world is looking to us for leadership. We have provided it in the past; the main reason why anti-American feelings are so strong in the world today is that we are not providing it in the present.
I think it is natural that every country has to take care of its interests, but there are some interests that are common to all countries. There are some human interests, or we need also international cooperation. We've sometimes confused it with dictation.
The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.
Throughout the 19th century, when there was a laissez-faire mentality and insufficient regulation, you had one crisis after another. Each crisis brought about some reform. That is how central banking developed.
When money is free, the rational lender will keep on lending until there is no one else to lend to.
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
Market fundamentalists recognize that the role of the state in the economy is always disruptive, inefficient, and generally has negative connotations. This leads them to believe that the market mechanism can take care of all the problems.
The more comprehensive and convincing a debt reduction program is, the less likely it is to fail. And remember, just as Germany is grateful to America for the Marshall Plan, Italy would be grateful to Germany for helping it lower its refinancing costs.
In the case of a meltdown, the regulatory authorities may find themselves obliged to step in to preserve the integrity of the system. It is in that light that the authorities have both a right and an obligation to supervise and regulate derivative instruments.
The trouble with institutional investors is that their performance is usually measured relative to their peer group and not by an absolute yardstick. This makes them trend followers by definition.
No individual anonymous participant can influence the prices and therefore you really can speculate in the market without paying attention to morality. That's one of the positive features of markets. That's why they function.
Economics seeks to be a science. Science is supposed to be objective and it is difficult to be scientific when the subject matter, the participant in the economic process, lacks objectivity.
Every bubble consists of a trend that can be observed in the real world and a misconception relating to that trend. The two elements interact with each other in a reflexive manner.
Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world.
We must not forget; but we must forgive. Suffering often such compassion from the Jewish community. It was Jewish groups in the US who were in the forefront in opposing the ethnic cleansing of Muslim in Bosnia.