Top 500 Ray Dalio Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “Having greatly reduced its price risk, McDonald’s introduced the McNugget in 1983. I felt great about helping make that happen.”

— Ray Dalio

402. “It is the rare bird who has the right mix of common sense, creativity, and character to shape change.”

— Ray Dalio

403. “Keep in mind both the rates of change and the levels of things, and the relationships between them. When determining an acceptable rate of improvement for something, it is its level in relation to the rate of change that matters.”

— Ray Dalio

404. “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. You will find that interesting and invaluable, and the richer perspective you gain will help you decide what you should do.”

— Ray Dalio

405. “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

406. “When a problem stems from your own lack of talent or skill, most people feel shame. Get over it. I cannot emphasize this enough: Acknowledging your weaknesses is not the same as surrendering to them. It’s the first step toward overcoming them. The pains you are feeling are “growing pains” that will test your character and reward you as you push through them.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

408. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

410. “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

411. “While it may seem counterintuitive, clearing your head can be the best way to make progress.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

414. “Power should lie in the reasoning, not the position, of the individual.”

— Ray Dalio

415. “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

416. “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

417. “Make sure those who are given radical transparency recognize their responsibilities to handle it well and to weigh things intelligently. People cannot be given the privilege of receiving information and then use the information to harm the company, so rules and procedures must be in place to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

— Ray Dalio

418. “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

419. “But this approach fails in cases where the future is different from the past and you don’t know the cause-effect relationships well enough to recognize them all. Understanding these relationships as I do has saved me from making mistakes when others did, most obviously in the 2008 financial crisis. Nearly everyone else assumed that the future would be similar to the past. Focusing strictly on the logical cause-effect relationships was what allowed us to see what was really going on.”

— Ray Dalio

420. “Espero que la lectura de este libro te anime, a ti y a otros, a descubrir tus propios principios, entre aquellos que considereis mejores, y los anoteis.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

422. “From this perspective, we can see that perfection doesn’t exist; it is a goal that fuels a never-ending process of adaptation. If nature, or anything, were perfect it wouldn’t be evolving. 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

423. “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

424. “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

425. “Know where the line is and be on the far side of fair.”

— Ray Dalio

426. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

428. “Never seize on the first available option, no matter how good it seems, before you’ve asked questions and explored. To prevent myself from falling into this trap, I used to literally ask myself questions: Am I learning? Have I learned enough yet that it’s time for deciding?”

— Ray Dalio

429. “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

430. “Teach and reinforce the merits of mistake-based learning. To encourage people to bring their mistakes into the open and analyze them objectively, managers need to foster a culture that makes this normal and that penalizes suppressing or covering up mistakes.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

432. “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

433. “Look to nature to learn how reality works.”

— Ray Dalio

434. “By recognizing the higher-level consequences nature optimizes for, I’ve come to see that people who overweigh the first-order consequences of their decisions and ignore the effects of second- and subsequent-order consequences rarely reach their goals. This is because first-order consequences often have opposite desirabilities from second-order consequences, resulting in big mistakes in decision making.”

— Ray Dalio

435. “Moreover, I recognized that managers who do not understand people’s different thinking styles cannot understand how the people working for them will handle different situations, which is like a foreman not understanding how his equipment will behave. That insight led us to explore psychometric testing as a way of learning how people think differently.”

— Ray Dalio

436. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

439. “Winston Churchill hit the nail on the head when he said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio

442. “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

443. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

445. “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

446. “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

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

— Ray Dalio

448. “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

449. “Looking back on getting fired from Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs said, “It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.”

— Ray Dalio

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

— Ray Dalio