Top 500 Ray Dalio Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “Recognize that while most people prefer compliments, accurate criticism is more valuable. You’ve heard the expression “no pain no gain.”

— Ray Dalio

402. “Help people through the pain that comes with exploring their weaknesses. Emotions tend to heat up during most disagreements, especially when the subject is someone’s weaknesses. Speak in a calm, slow, and analytical manner to facilitate communication.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

404. “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

405. “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

406. “I began to experience painful moments in a radically different way. Instead of feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, I saw pain as nature’s reminder that there is something important for me to learn.”

— Ray Dalio

407. “To have a real idea meritocracy, there must be transparency so that people can see things for themselves.”

— Ray Dalio

408. “It’ll be decades – and maybe never – before the computer can replicate many of the things that the brain can do in terms of imagination, synthesis, and creativity. That’s because the brain comes genetically programmed with millions of years of abilities honed through evolution. The “science” of decision making that underlies many computer systems remains much less valuable than the “art.”

— Ray Dalio

409. “Your part in an employee’s personal evolution begins with a frank assessment of their strengths and weaknesses, followed by a plan for how their weaknesses can be mitigated either through training or by switching to a different job that taps into their strengths and preferences.”

— Ray Dalio

410. “If you don’t mind being wrong on the way to being right you’ll learn a lot –.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

412. “It’s a basic reality that if you don’t experience the consequences of your actions, you’ll take less ownership of them.”

— Ray Dalio

413. “Be clear on whether you are arguing or seeking to understand, and think about which is most appropriate based on your and others’ believability.”

— Ray Dalio

414. “I didn’t value experience as much as character, creativity, and common sense, which I suppose was related to my having started Bridgewater two years out of school myself, and my belief that having an ability to figure things out is more important than having specific knowledge of how to do something.”

— Ray Dalio

415. “No matter what work you do, at a high level you are simply setting goals and building machines to help you achieve them. I built the machine that is Bridgewater by constantly comparing its actual outcomes to my mental map of the outcomes that it should be producing, and finding ways to improve it.”

— Ray Dalio

416. “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

417. “Organisms, organizations, and individual people are always highly imperfect but capable of improving. So rather than getting stuck hiding our mistakes and pretending we’re perfect, it makes sense to find our imperfections and deal with them.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

419. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

423. “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

424. “My ultimate goal is to create a machine that works so well that I can just sit back and watch beauty happen.”

— Ray Dalio

425. “Be Radically Open-Minded.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

428. “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

429. “Recognize that experience creates internalized learning that book learning can’t replace.”

— Ray Dalio

430. “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

431. “Go to the pain rather than avoid it. If you don’t let up on yourself and instead become comfortable always operating with some level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace.”

— Ray Dalio

432. “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

433. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

435. “Be imprecise. Understand the concept of “by-and-large” and use approximations.”

— Ray Dalio

436. “Liberal” had ceased to mean being in favor of progress and had come to mean “paying people not to work.”

— Ray Dalio

437. “Communicate the plan clearly and have clear metrics conveying whether you are progressing according to it.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

439. “Wekanesses don’t matter if you find solutions to them.”

— Ray Dalio

440. “Closed-minded people focus much more on being understood than on understanding others. When people disagree, they tend to be quicker to assume that they aren’t being understood than to consider whether they’re the ones who are not understanding the other person’s perspective. Open-minded people always feel compelled to see things through others’ eyes.”

— Ray Dalio

441. “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

442. “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

443. “Go back before you go forward.”

— Ray Dalio

444. “No matter what you want out of life, your ability to adapt and move quickly and efficiently through the process of personal evolution will determine your success and your happiness.”

— Ray Dalio

445. “A thorough and accurate diagnosis, while more time-consuming, will pay huge dividends in the future.”

— Ray Dalio

446. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

448. “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

449. “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

450. “Don’t lower the bar.”

— Ray Dalio