Top 500 Ray Dalio Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “Knowing how to deal well with your setbacks is as important as knowing how to move forward.”

— Ray Dalio

353. “Strategic thinking requires both diagnosis and design.”

— Ray Dalio

354. “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

355. “Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with “not knowing” is more important than whatever it is you do know.”

— Ray Dalio

356. “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

357. “If you are open-minded enough and determined, you can get virtually anything you want. So I certainly don’t want to dissuade you from going after whatever you want. At the same time, I urge you to reflect on whether what you are going after is consistent with your nature. Whatever your nature is, there are many paths that will suit you, so don’t fixate on just one. Should a particular path close, all you have to do is find another good one consistent with what you’re like.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

359. “Bad outcomes don’t just happen; they occur because specific people make, or fail to make, specific decisions.”

— Ray Dalio

360. “There is almost always a good path that you just haven’t figured out yet, so look for it until you find it rather than settle for the choice that is then apparent to you.”

— Ray Dalio

361. “Most people do not look thoughtfully at the facts and draw their conclusions by objectively weighing the evidence. Instead, they make their decisions based on what their deep-seated subconscious mind wants and then they filter the evidence to make it consistent with those desires.”

— Ray Dalio

362. “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

363. “Avoid staying too distant. You need to know your people extremely well, provide and receive regular feedback, and have quality discussions.”

— Ray Dalio

364. “Know that the most constant struggle is between feeling and thinking.”

— Ray Dalio

365. “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

366. “Don’t let fears of what others think of you stand in your way. You must be willing to do things in the unique ways you think are best – and to open-mindedly reflect on the feedback that comes inevitably as a result of being that way.”

— Ray Dalio

367. “Get over “blame” and “credit” and get on with “accurate” and “inaccurate.” Worrying about “blame” and “credit” or “positive” and “negative” feedback impedes the iterative process that is essential to learning. Remember that what has already happened lies in the past and no longer matters except as a lesson for the future.”

— Ray Dalio

368. “Slow down your thinking so you can note the criteria you are using to make your decision.”

— Ray Dalio

369. “Enforce the logic of conversations. People’s emotions tend to heat up when there is disagreement. Remain calm and analytical at all times; it is more difficult to shut down a logical exchange than an emotional one. Remember too that emotions can shade how people see reality.”

— Ray Dalio

370. “Principles are like laws – you can’t break one simply because you and someone else agree to break it.”

— Ray Dalio

371. “To help you stay centered and effective, pretend that your life is a martial art or a game, the object of which is to get around a challenge and reach a goal. Once you accept its rules, you’ll get used to the discomfort that comes with the constant frustration.”

— Ray Dalio

372. “People with proven track records in a certain area would get more believability, or decision-making weight, within that area. By recording these qualities in people’s Baseball Cards, others who’d never worked with them before could know what to expect from them.”

— Ray Dalio

373. “Hire someone better than you.”

— Ray Dalio

374. “Each person at Bridgewater should act like an owner, responsible for operating in this way and for holding others accountable to operate in this way.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

376. “You will either learn valuable lessons from your mistakes and press on, better equipped to succeed – or you won’t and you will fail.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

378. “So, for me, meaningful work and meaningful relationships were and still are my primary goals and everything I did was for them. Making money was an incidental consequence of that.”

— Ray Dalio

379. “There is no avoiding pain, especially if you’re going after ambitious goals. Believe it or not, you are lucky to feel that kind of pain if you approach it correctly, because it is a signal that you need to find solutions so you can progress.”

— Ray Dalio

380. “Even experts can make mistakes; my point is simply that it pays to be radically open-minded and triangulate with smart people.”

— Ray Dalio

381. “Imagine a world in which you can use technology to connect to a system in which you can input the issue you’re dealing with and have exchanges about what you should do and why with the highest-rated thinkers in the world.”

— Ray Dalio

382. “Adaptation through rapid trial and error is invaluable.”

— Ray Dalio

383. “Remember that there are typically many paths to achieving your goals. You only need to find one that works.”

— Ray Dalio

384. “If a number of different believable people say you are doing something wrong and you are the only one who doesn’t see it that way, assume that you are probably biased.”

— Ray Dalio

385. “I now realize that nature optimizes for the whole, not for the individual, but most people judge good and bad based only on how it affects them.”

— Ray Dalio

386. “Raising the probability of being right is valuable no matter what your probability of being right already is.”

— Ray Dalio

387. “Humility is as important, or even more important, as having the strengths yourself.”

— Ray Dalio

388. “I believe that the key to success lies in knowing how to both strive for a lot and fail well.”

— Ray Dalio

389. “From this perspective, we can see that perfection doesn’t exist; it is a goal that fuels a never-ending process of adaptation.”

— Ray Dalio

390. “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

391. “I didn’t like school, not just because it required a lot of memorization, but because I wasn’t interested in most of the things my teachers thought were important. I never understood what doing well in school would get me other than my mother’s approval.”

— Ray Dalio

392. “Having greatly reduced its price risk, McDonald’s introduced the McNugget in 1983. I felt great about helping make that happen.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

394. “Get rid of irrelevant details so that the essential things and the relationships between them stand out.”

— Ray Dalio

395. “Play jazz with people with whom you are compatible but who will also challenge you.”

— Ray Dalio

396. “If you can think for yourself while being open-minded in a clearheaded way to find out what is best for you to do, and if you can summon up the courage to do it, you will make the most of your life. If you can’t do that, you should reflect on why that is, because that’s most likely your greatest impediment to getting more of what you want out of life.”

— Ray Dalio

397. “I believe that all organizations basically have two types of people: those who work to be part of a mission, and those who work for a paycheck. I wanted to surround myself with people who needed what I needed, which was to make sense of things for myself.”

— Ray Dalio

398. “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

399. “Remember that the quality of the life you get will depend largely on the quality of the decisions that you make as you pursue your goals.”

— Ray Dalio

400. “They move on to fix problems without getting at their root causes, which is a recipe for continued failure.”

— Ray Dalio