Go to sayings/quotes/hardo advice? - Ex: "Be good, or be good at it."

What are some one-liners you or others float around? Whether it is actual good advice, water cooler banter, tongue and cheek sayings, or inside industry jokes, I want to hear them all.

56 Comments
 

“Dinner is for suckers”- Jerry Seinfeld

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

it's "tongue in cheek" FYI

Thank you for your interest in the 2020 Investment Banking Full-time Analyst Programme (London) at JPMorgan Chase. After a thorough review of your application, we regret to inform you that we are unable to move forward with your candidacy at this time.
 

"You gotta pay your dues."

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

This mainly comes from a cycling aspect - as you have to ride a lot of base miles to begin to get good at the sport. You have to pay your dues.

It is also a subject of those who theorize that 10,000 hrs of something makes you a subject matter expert.

Whatever the field or career - you must first pay your dues. It may suck, but nearly everyone before you did it and you have to suck it up and endure it and get through it.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Also, based on a 2000hr yearly work skill, 10,000 hrs is 5 years. Or 2.5yrs for those working 4000hrs annually.

Either way - "you have to pay your dues"

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

On the first day of my first job out of undergrad I was told by someone very high up

“Some people pay more dues than others”

Which is to say, you are judged by the value you add, not the effort you exert

Array
 

"Pay your dues" is a great phrase if you're just starting out, it's something helpful to think about. Everyone has to do those early tough years.

However, it also gets used in negative ways. No, we're not promoting you because we feel you have to "pay your dues" and sit in your same position for a few more years even though you're completely capable of the promotion tomorrow.

From the bosses perspective, if your chance to move up is happening quicker than it happended for him or her back in the day, then automatically "you have not paid your dues"....has nothing to do with whether you have paid them or whether you have skill or talent.

 

This is a really obvious one but somebody's got to say it:

Do or do not. There is no try.

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 
"Goya Beans" did you mean "it's a doggie-dog world?"

It is actually a dog - eat - dog world, you are incorrect.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Second is just first to lose

Don’t have a plan B. Just make sure plan A works.

Hermes ties are Jordans for white people.

Don’t marry before you are 35. You want a trophy wife, not a medal participation wife.

I can buy you (when we were kids my rich friend said this to a regular guy that was arguing with him)

Lots of other rap quotes come to mind but i dont have all day

made new unrelated account - dont reply or message as i never use it. 
 

"I'm the best ever. I'm the most brutal and vicious, and most ruthless champion there's ever been. There's no one can stop me. Lennox is a conqueror? No, I'm Alexander, he's no Alexander. I'm the best ever. There's never been anybody as ruthless. I'm Sonny Liston,I'm Jack Dempsey. There's no one like me. I'm from their cloth. There's no one that can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah." - "Iron" Mike

 

"When your mind is telling you you're done, you're really only 40 percent done." - David Goggins

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

-Don't hate the player, hate the game

-Grin and bear it (that's what I told my ex)

-There are those who make things happen and those who don't

-Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value (T. Roosevelt)

-Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to procuring a new vessel is better spent than patching leaks (Buffett perhaps?)

 

Anything by the Baltimore Prophet, H.L. Mencken

  • “I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”
  • “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
  • As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
  • “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
  • “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
  • “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
  • “The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable...”
  • “In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.”
  • “A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”
  • “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
  • “The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
  • “Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”
Namaste. D.O.U.G.
 

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