Michael Lewis Quotes (39 Quotes)


    Bruce and I both put 50 in a bank account. That's how we started the company.

    The idea is to keep top faculty in North Carolina. There will be some things they will teach back and forth.

    The sentimentality of baseball is very deeply rooted in the American baseball fan. It is the one sport that is transmitted from fathers to sons.

    I think we were a little better at the end. We just ran out of time. We just got beat.

    One reason we've seen a decline in the past few years is that going to the movies isn't as special as it used to be. People have big screens and good sound at home. Why would they leave if you don't offer more than that


    The Red Sox are the local scapegoats. It's hard enough to play baseball without being the local scapegoat too.

    Baseball is this intense subculture that actually doesn't speak very much for the larger culture.

    We were stoked after the first touchdown, ... So on the next one, I told everybody to get a guy and square up and I'd make the moves to get open.

    They believe that for the guys who didn't get it, no book is going to make any difference, ... Billy says, 'By the time there are no inefficiencies to exploit, I'll be retired.' But if I was an owner of a baseball team and someone finally puts a fine point on inefficiency in baseball and a way of doing things that doesn't involve spending Yankees-size money, I might pay attention.

    This hurts because it's Dallas, a division opponent. To come out and lose like this, it's really embarrassing. We didn't give our best effort out there today. We can play a whole lot better. Maybe we're getting too big-headed, I don't know. We have to get better, we have to get better.

    Book tours are almost designed to beat out of an author any affection he has for his book.

    My judgement is not good when I am on a book tour. I am not thinking about it that much. What happens is I will go back home. I have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old and a wife who is now taking care of them who is wondering where her husband is.

    The sports world is an echo chamber. All it takes is one quote from a general manager and a thousand sports columns bloom.

    In terms of transportation, Jerry Kilgore had a plan.

    The Qantas guy said to (dad), 'We don't provide wheelchairs outside the front door of the terminal, and if she needs a wheelchair -- if she's that sick -- she should have her own wheelchair'.

    I slept for only about an hour, if that. I watched about everything I could on TV. I had the Weather Channel on all night.

    We're not looking at it like they got rid of their No. 1 receiver. They have other guys who can make plays.

    There are enough books in the world. You want to write the ones that are good. The minute you write books because you need the income not because you think you have a good subject, you should just stop. There are sixty thousand books published in this country every year, and most of them are crap.

    In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation.

    I left it on the Weather Channel the whole night. It was hard just trying to go to sleep. I was lying in bed trying to rest but my grandparents are at home and that's what was on my mind.

    The more chaotic the market is, the less competitive balance is a problem because there's more opportunity for efficient management, ... Steinbrenner's spending creates a chaotic market.

    He's a machine for competitive balance, ... Yes, the money is in New York. Yes, the money is in his hands. But he squanders money. Thank God for it.

    If you like crafty stuff they are going to open the market for crafty people. When Jaime Moyer of the Seattle Mariners pitches, I love watching him. In a way it is a much more interesting game than watching Randy Johnson pitch. You are not only watching a game you are watching a thought process.

    You're teaching residents out there. At the same time, we estimate that we will be providing dental services to tens of thousands of people every year.

    The Red Sox are a curious thing because so much here is media driven. You can't go fire half your scouts here because they are all friends with the local reporters. Your life is going to hell in the papers.

    The majority of people in this county and state believe in traditional marriage values. We know it's a cultural war between those who believe in absolute values and those who don't.

    There has been this - and it's reflected in the broadcasts - this moronic use of statistics. Which has suggested to everyone who is intelligent the use of statistics is moronic.

    I don't think there is a national pasttime. Watching TV is a national pasttime. Really. If there is a national pasttime, it is watching TV.

    There is some wonderful material that ended up on the cutting-room floor because the story is a very focused story. There wasn't room to go into digressions with the Red Sox and the Blue Jays.

    Although there may be no intervention to overcome the deficits associated with severe medical complications at birth, there is room for improvement in the social environment.

    Why pay $20 million to Harrison Ford? I don't even understand that. They think they have to do it... If someone puts a price on himself, that suggests he is irreplaceable, then he better find somewhere else to work.

    But there was no player on whom his mind naturally fixed. The only person in the organization whose riddance would make him happier was his manager, Art Howe. It wasn't long before he had a novel idea trade Art.

    You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.

    I think that fans are always looking for someone to blame. Wouldn't it be nice if they looked in the mirror?

    The A's are held to the standard of the Yankees in a funny kind of way. That if they don't win the World Series it is regarded as a failure.

    The Oakland clubhouse is a wonderful place. A lot of these guys feel like rejects. They were rejects and they feel - they can tell you how baseball screwed up.

    There are several insights at the heart of the A's system that I think are wonderful for baseball. One, that it's a team game. That no one player is going to make that much of a difference to your team, so for god's sake don't go blow a quarter of your budget on one guy.

    People who think they know what they are talking about when they talk about baseball include the announcers and all of the sports press - no matter how much evidence you present them to the contrary they will continue to think that what they think is right.

    If you had to point to one thing that made it less likely that the Red Sox would win the World Series, I would say it was those people that go to Fenway Park to watch the games. And then the media around it.


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