Top James Surowiecki Quotes

James Surowiecki Biography

James Michael Surowiecki (/ˌsʊəroʊˈwɪkiː/ SOOR-oh-WIK-ee; born April 30, 1967) is an American journalist. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he wrote a regular column on business and finance called "The Financial Page".

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James Surowiecki Quotes

As technology improves, on-screen avatars look more and more like real people. When they start looking too real, though, we pull away. These almost-humans aren't quite right; they look creepy, like zombies.

Creepy, Improves, People, Real, Technology

Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial.

Art, Collecting, Financial, Rewards, Traditionally, Wealthy

Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.

Smart, People, Groups, Circumstances, Right, Smarter

What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity.

Cost, Create, Investment, Jobs, Value, Wages

You can't fuel real economic growth with indiscriminate credit. You can only fuel it with well-allocated, long-term investment.

Growth, Indiscriminate, Long, Real

If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.

Make, Namely, Organization, Team, Wisdom

If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

Claim, Claims, Good, Loopholes, Making Money, Needs

To be sure, if you watch CNBC all day long you'll pick up some interesting news about particular companies and the economy as a whole. Unfortunately, to get to the useful information, you have to wade through reams of useless stuff, with little guidance on how to distinguish between the two.

Interesting, Long, Stuff, Two, Useless Stuff, Wade

Besides great climates and lovely beaches, California and Greece share a fondness for dysfunctional politics and feckless budgeting.

Beach, California, Lovely, Politics, Share

We assume that good-looking people are smarter and more effective than they really are, and that homely people are the reverse.

Assuming, Effective, Homely, Looking Good, People, Smarter

Lower oil prices won't, by themselves, topple the mullahs in Iran. But it's significant that, historically, when oil prices have been low, Iranian reformers have been ascendant and radicals relatively subdued, and vice versa when prices have been high.

High, Iran, Oil, Relatively, Significant, Vices

I typically don't adopt the ascetic approach. In part, that's because I do use the Net for research even as I'm writing (to check facts, or so on). But I think it's also because I find the possibility of distraction comforting.

Comforting, Distraction, Think, Thinking, Use, Writing

I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.

Decisions, Information, People, Perfect, Thinking, Writing

By the time of the '90s boom, CEOs had become superheroes, accorded celebrity treatment and followed with a kind of slavish scrutiny that Alfred P. Sloan could never have imagined.

Become, Kind, Superhero, Treatment

Popular as Keynesian fiscal policy may be, many economists are skeptical that it works. They argue that fine-tuning the economy is a virtually impossible task, and that fiscal-stimulus programs are usually too small, and arrive too late, to make a difference.

Differences, Impossible, Keynesian, Making A Difference, Tasks, Works

It's a familiar truism that at any one moment, financial markets are dominated by either fear or greed. But the healthiest markets are those that are animated by both fear and greed at the same time.

Familiar, Fear, Financial, Greed

Sometimes even a smart crowd will make a mistake.

Crowd, Crowds, Mistake, Smart

Lack of confidence, sometimes alternating with unrealistic dreams of heroic success, often leads to procrastination, and many studies suggest that procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that of course creates a vicious cycle.

Dream, Heroic, Impossible, Procrastination, Self, Unrealistic

The typical American corporation is a shareholders' republic the same way that China is a peoples' republic.

Corporation, Corporations, Republic, Same, Typical

Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that most scientific work never gets noticed. Study after study has shown that most scientific papers are read by almost no one, while a small number of papers are read by many people.

Community, Flaw, People, Picture, Science, Small Numbers

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James Surowiecki Biography

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