Top 500 Ray Dalio Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Most people fight seeing what’s true when it’s not what they want it to be. That’s bad, because it is more important to understand and deal with the bad staff since the good staff will take care of itself.”

— Ray Dalio

452. “El trabajo y las relaciones significativos eran, y son, mis objetivos principales, y lo subordinaba todo a ellos. Ganar dinero era una consecuencia accidental de lo anterior.”

— Ray Dalio

453. “Over the decades since, I’ve repeatedly seen policymakers deliver such assurances immediately before currency devaluations, so I learned not to believe government policymakers when they assure you that they won’t let a currency devaluation happen. The more strongly they make those assurances, the more desperate the situation probably is, so the more likely it is that a devaluation will take place.”

— Ray Dalio

454. “Use evidence-based decision-making tools.”

— Ray Dalio

455. “Everyone has at least one big thing that stands in the way of their success; find yours and deal with it.”

— Ray Dalio

456. “I urge you to be curious enough to want to understand how the people who see things differently from you came to see them that way.”

— Ray Dalio

457. “Buddhist monks who had practiced more than ten thousand hours of meditation, researchers at the University of Wisconsin measured significantly higher levels of gamma waves in their brains; these waves are associated with perception and problem solving.”

— Ray Dalio

458. “Any damn fool can make it complex.”

— Ray Dalio

459. “History has shown that we shouldn’t rely on governments to protect us financially. On the contrary, we should expect most governments to abuse their privileged positions as the creators and users of money and credit for the same reasons that you might commit those abuses if you were in their shoes.”

— Ray Dalio

460. “Avoid setting goals based on what you think you can achieve.”

— Ray Dalio

461. “In thoughtful disagreement, your goal is not to convince the other party that you are right – it is to find out which view is true and decide what to do about it.”

— Ray Dalio

462. “Debating takes time, and that time increases exponentially depending on the number of people participating in the discussion, so you have to carefully choose the right people in the right numbers to suit the decision that needs to be made. In any discussion try to limit the participation to those whom you value most in light of your objectives. The worst way to pick people is based on whether their conclusions align with yours.”

— Ray Dalio

463. “Have the clearest possible reporting lines and delineations of responsibilities.”

— Ray Dalio

464. “When you get down to it, our brains are essentially computers that are programmed in certain ways, take in data, and spit out instructions. We can program the logic in both the computer that is our mind and the computer that is our tool so that they can work together and even double-check each other. Doing that is fabulous.”

— Ray Dalio

465. “The need for phony praise needs to be unlearned.”

— Ray Dalio

466. “I’ll explain the concept of believability in more detail in later chapters, but to cover it quickly: Believable parties are those who have repeatedly and successfully accomplished something – and have great explanations for how they did it.”

— Ray Dalio

467. “I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want.”

— Ray Dalio

468. “You should be able to delegate the details.”

— Ray Dalio

469. “Keeping people in jobs they are not suited for is terrible for them because it allows them to live in a false reality while holding back their personal evolution, and it is terrible for the community because it compromises the meritocracy and everyone pays the price.”

— Ray Dalio

470. “Go back before you go forward.”

— Ray Dalio

471. “I have come to realize that bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons, and not just about business but also about relationships.”

— Ray Dalio

472. “Duhigg’s core idea is the role of the three-step “habit loop.” The first step is a cue – some “trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use,” according to Duhigg. Step two is the routine, “which can be physical or mental or emotional.” Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is “worth remembering for the future.”

— Ray Dalio

473. “Seeing one of the richest and most accomplished men on the planet lose everything made a huge impression on me.”

— Ray Dalio

474. “So I learned to be radically open-minded to allow others to point out what I might be missing.”

— Ray Dalio

475. “Hire someone better than you.”

— Ray Dalio

476. “An organization is a community with a set of shared values and goals. Its morale and smooth functioning should always take precedence over your need to be right – and besides, you could be wrong.”

— Ray Dalio

477. “Don’t mistake a cause of a problem with the real problem.”

— Ray Dalio

478. “Recognize that performance in school doesn’t tell you much about whether a person has the values and abilities you are looking for. Largely because they are the easiest to measure, memory and processing speed tend to be the abilities that determine success in school, so school performance is an excellent gauge of these qualities.”

— Ray Dalio

479. “Most people initially find this process very uncomfortable. While most appreciate it intellectually, they typically are challenged by it emotionally because it requires them to separate themselves from their ego’s attachment to being right and try to see what they have a hard time seeing.”

— Ray Dalio

480. “Life will throw you such challenges, some of which will seem devastating at the time. In bad times, your goal might be to keep what you have, to minimize your rate of loss, or simply to deal with a loss that is irrevocable. Your mission is to always make the best possible choices, knowing that you will be rewarded if you do.”

— Ray Dalio

481. “Remember that when it comes to assessing people, the two biggest mistakes you can make are being overconfident in your assessment and failing to get in sync on it.”

— Ray Dalio

482. “Apple’s iconic “1984” and “Here’s to the Crazy Ones,” which were ad campaigns that spoke to me.”

— Ray Dalio

483. “It can be any kind of long-term challenge that leads to personal improvement.”

— Ray Dalio

484. “Use daily updates as a tool for staying on top of what your people are doing and thinking. I ask each person who reports to me to take about ten to fifteen minutes to write a brief description of what they did that day, the issues pertaining to them, and their reflections.”

— Ray Dalio

485. “If you can be open with your weaknesses it will make you freer and will help you deal with them better. I urge you to not be embarrassed about your problems, recognizing that everyone has them.”

— Ray Dalio

486. “Find out who is responsible for whatever you are seeking to understand and then ask them. Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.”

— Ray Dalio

487. “I have seen people who agree on the major issues waste hours arguing over details.”

— Ray Dalio

488. “I myself find the excitement, lower risk, and educational value of achieving a deep understanding of cause-effect relationships much more appealing than a reliance on algorithms I don’t understand, so I am drawn to that path.”

— Ray Dalio

489. “Embrace tough love. In my own life, what I want to give to people, most importantly to people I love, is the power to deal with reality to get what they want. In pursuit of my goal to give them strength, I will often deny them what they “want” because that will give them.”

— Ray Dalio

490. “Georgi Plekhanov’s classic On the Role of the Individual in History.”

— Ray Dalio

491. “Don’t mistake possibilities for probabilities.”

— Ray Dalio

492. “While it’s easier to avoid confrontations in the short run, the consequences of doing so can be massively destructive in the long term. It’s critical that conflicts actually get resolved – not through superficial compromise, but through seeking the important, accurate conclusions.”

— Ray Dalio

493. “When I ask why, a common answer is: “I want to make up my own mind.” These people seem to think that considering opposing views will somehow threaten their ability to decide what they want to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. Taking in others’ perspectives in order to consider them in no way reduces your freedom to think independently and make your own decisions. It will just broaden your perspective as you make them.”

— Ray Dalio

494. “I saw that to do exceptionally well you have to push your limits and that, if you push your limits, you will crash and it will hurt a lot.”

— Ray Dalio

495. “Watch out for people who think it’s embarrassing not to know. They’re likely to be more concerned with appearances than actually achieving the goal; this can lead to ruin over time.”

— Ray Dalio

496. “Some people want to change the world and others want to operate in simple harmony with it and savor life. Neither is better.”

— Ray Dalio

497. “Most people have a tough time reflecting when they are in pain and they pay attention to other things when the pain passes, so they miss out on the reflections that provide the lessons.”

— Ray Dalio

498. “By looking at nature from the top down, we can see that much of what we call human nature is really animal nature.”

— Ray Dalio

499. “Having everyone randomly probe everyone else is an unproductive waste of time.”

— Ray Dalio

500. “Software developers, mathematicians, and game-theory modelers aren’t running away with all the rewards; it is the people who have the most common sense, imagination, and determination.”

— Ray Dalio