“It's so simple to spend less than you earn, and invest shrewdly, and avoid toxic people and toxic activities, and try to keep learning all your life, and do a lot of deferred gratification because you prefer life that way. And if you do all those things, you are almost certain to succeed. If you don't, you're going to need a lot of luck.”

“The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you're going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life's results, good and bad, as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.”

“The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want.”

“The highest form which civilization can reach is a seamless web of deserved trust.”

“In your own life what you want is a seamless web of deserved trust. And if your proposed marriage contract has forty-seven pages, my suggestion is do not enter.”