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According to the academic world view that markets are efficient, only the revelation of a dramatic piece of information can cause a crash, yet in reality even the most thorough post-mortem analyses are typically inconclusive as to what this piece of information might have been. For traders and investors, the fear of a crash is a perpetual source of stress, and the onset of the event itself always ruins the lives of some of them.

— Didier Sornette Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003)

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Philosophy

More quotes by Didier Sornette

Thus the so-called Moore's law is incorrect, since it implies only an exponential growth.

Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003)

The point is that humans are rarely at their best when they use rational reasoning.

Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003)

Since it is the actions of investors whose buy and sell decisions move prices up and down, any deviation from a random walk has ultimately to be traced back to the behavior of investors.

Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003)

The incentives that people need to work and to find meaning in their lives should be found beyond material wealth and power.

Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003)

Perhaps the most profound synthesis of physical sciences came from the realization that everything could be understood from "conservation laws" and symmetry principals.

Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003)

All Didier Sornette quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Didier Sornette (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.