Top 160 George Soros Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Increase your bets when you are confident and scale down your positions when you don’t have conviction.”

— George Soros

52. “Sometimes time actually works against you if you refuse to face the relevant issues and explain to the public what is at stake.”

— George Soros

53. “I am for maximum supervision and minimum regulation.”

— George Soros

54. “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin. But when I made my way in the world I wanted to indulge myself in my fantasies to the extent that I could afford.”

— George Soros

55. “It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist.”

— George Soros

56. “Market prices are always wrong in the sense that they present a biased view of the future.”

— George Soros

57. “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.”

— George Soros

58. “I contend that financial markets never reflect the underlying reality accurately; they always distort it in some way or another and the distortions find expression in market prices. Those distortions can, occasionally, find ways to affect the fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect.”

— George Soros

59. “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.”

— George Soros

60. “Studying economics is not a good preparation for dealing with it.”

— George Soros

61. “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.”

— George Soros

62. “Hedge funds are a very efficient way of managing money. But there are clearly some risks. Hedge funds use credit and credit is a source of instability. Transactions involving credit should be regulated.”

— George Soros

63. “My original intention was to spend the money in my lifetime.”

— George Soros

64. “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.”

— George Soros

65. “When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.”

— George Soros

66. “Globalization has rendered the world increasingly interdependent, but international politics is still based on the sovereignty of states.”

— George Soros

67. “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.”

— George Soros

68. “The eurozone status quo is neither tolerable nor stable. Mainstream economists would call it an inferior equilibrium; I call it a nightmare – one that is inflicting tremendous pain and suffering that could be easily avoided if the misconceptions and taboos that sustain it were dispelled.”

— George Soros

69. “Revolutions usually start with enthusiasm and end in tears.”

— George Soros

70. “The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.”

— George Soros

71. “China could easily emerge as the great winner if the Chinese leaders handle the situation well. On the other hand, they could also turn out to be the biggest losers if they handle it poorly. If the management turns out be wrong, this could lead to a political crisis in China.”

— George Soros

72. “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.”

— George Soros

73. “Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.”

— George Soros

74. “The financial markets play an active role in determining what’s going to happen, how the economy is going to function.”

— George Soros

75. “The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself.”

— George Soros

76. “An open society calls itself open to improvement. It is based on the recognition that people have divergent views and interests, and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth.”

— George Soros

77. “Democracy, by its very nature, can’t be imposed on people. Democracy has to be the people deciding for themselves.”

— George Soros

78. “I think that my foundation uses the money better than the government does. In any event, I do pay taxes.”

— George Soros

79. “The world order needs a major overhaul.”

— George Soros

80. “We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.”

— George Soros

81. “American supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today.”

— George Soros

82. “These public-private partnerships are very, very dangerous. The most rotten part of the financial system in the US consisted of the government sponsored entities. They really kicked off this crisis. The state should set the rules and enforce them but not become involved as a market player.”

— George Soros

83. “In politics, manipulating reality can take presidence over finding reality.”

— George Soros

84. “Political debate is more interested in manipulating the truth, than finding the truth.”

— George Soros

85. “Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.”

— George Soros

86. “The key problem is the debt restructuring in the euro zone. As long as the debt burden is not reduced, there is no chance of the weaker EU countries regaining competitiveness.”

— George Soros

87. “To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride.”

— George Soros

88. “An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.”

— George Soros

89. “Mankind’s ability to understand and control the forces of nature greatly exceeds our ability to govern ourselves.”

— George Soros

90. “The bureaucratic method of building an integrated Europe has exhausted its potential.”

— George Soros

91. “What works for Germany can’t work for the rest of Europe: No country can run a chronic surplus without others running deficits.”

— George Soros

92. “Once a trend is established it tends to persist and to run it’s full course.”

— George Soros

93. “There is no doubt that the countries that now have a very large debt have not introduced the kind of structural reforms that Germany did and are therefore at a disadvantage. But the problem is that this disadvantage is becoming even more pronounced through the punitive policies in place.”

— George Soros

94. “Merkel has realized that the euro is not working, but she cannot change the narrative she has created because that narrative has caught the imagination of the German public, and the German public has accepted it.”

— George Soros

95. “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.”

— George Soros

96. “Markets are imperfect. So you do need regulation, knowing that the regulators are also human.”

— George Soros

97. “I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.”

— George Soros

98. “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.”

— George Soros

99. “Giving government aid to a bank basically transforms it into a utility. The huge salaries in this sector are only a symptom of a more profound misalignment. The profitability of the finance industry has been excessive. That is absurd.”

— George Soros

100. “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.”

— George Soros