A self-made billionaire, Ray Dalio is the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. A pioneer in the field of investing, Dalio has been a major contributor to economic theory and is known for his unique management style. In this blog post we have shared the most famous Ray Dalio Quotes.
Dalio was born in Queens, New York, in 1949. After getting his start on Wall Street in the 1970s, he founded Bridgewater Associates in 1981. The hedge fund has grown into the world’s largest, with over $160 billion in assets under management. Dalio is also the author of several books on investing, including Principles: Life and Work, which debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. In 2011, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world.
87 Ray Dalio Quotes
- “Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.”
2. “If you can’t successfully do something, don’t think you can tell others how it should be done”
3. “The greatest gift you can give someone is the power to be successful. Giving people the opportunity to struggle rather than giving them the things they are struggling for will make them stronger.”
4. “I came to see that people’s greatest weaknesses are the flip sides of their greatest strengths.”
5. “Remember that in great partnerships, consideration and generosity are more important than money.”
6. “I believe that the key to success lies in knowing how to both strive for a lot and fail well.”
7. “Remember that people typically don’t change all that much.”
8. “Focus more on making the pie bigger than on exactly how to slice it”
9. “The people who work for you should constantly challenge you,”
10. “Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life.”
Inspirational Ray Dalio Quotes
11. “Heroes inevitably experience at least one very big failure that tests whether they have the resilience to come back and fight smarter and with more determination.”
12. “I also feared boredom and mediocrity much more than I feared failure.”
13. “satisfaction of success doesn’t come from achieving your goals, but from struggling well.”
14. “Never say anything about someone that you wouldn’t say to them directly and don’t try people without accusing them to their faces.”
15. “I also feared boredom and mediocrity much more than I feared failure. For me, great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.”
16. “Avoid fixating on irrelevant details.”
17. “Understand the differences between managing, micromanaging, and not managing.”
18. “Great people are hard to find so make sure you think about how to keep them.”
19. “Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life— you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.”
20. “Evolution is the single greatest force in the universe; it is the only thing that is permanent and it drives everything.”
Famous Ray Dalio Quotes
21. “Reflect and remind yourself that an accurate criticism is the most valuable feedback you can receive.”
22. “Appreciate the art of thoughtful disagreement.”
23. “Unattainable goals appeal to heroes,”
24. “Having a good set of principles is like having a good collection of recipes for success.”
25. “One thing that leaders should not do, in my opinion, is be manipulative.”
26. “Choose your habits well. Habit is probably the most powerful tool in your brain’s toolbox.”
27. “Believe it or not, your pain will fade and you will have many other opportunities ahead of you,”
28. “Watch out for people who confuse goals and tasks, because if they can’t make that distinction, you can’t trust them with responsibilities.”
29. “Because our educational system is hung up on precision, the art of being good at approximations is insufficiently valued. This impedes conceptual thinking.”
30. “Remember that weaknesses don’t matter if you find solutions.”
Ray Dalio Quotes About Life
31. “My painful mistakes shifted me from having a perspective of “I know I’m right” to having one of “How do I know I’m right?”
32. “I saw pain as nature’s reminder that there is something important for me to learn.”
33. “Don’t get distracted by shiny objects”
34. “Don’t pay as much attention to people’s conclusions as to the reasoning that led them to their conclusions.”
35. “It’s smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them.”
36. “Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life. They can be applied again and again in similar situations to help you achieve your goals.”
37. “Since life brings both ups and downs, struggling well doesn’t just make your ups better; it makes your downs less bad.”
38. “Remember not to be overconfident in your assessments, as it’s possible you are wrong.”
39. “I just want to be right—I don’t care if the right answer comes from me.”
40. “Having nothing to hide relieves stress and builds trust.”
Thought-Provoking Ray Dalio Quotes
41. “Put things in perspective by going back before going forward”
42. “in order to treat people appropriately you must treat them differently.”
43. “Managers who do not understand people’s different thinking styles cannot understand how the people working for them will handle different situations.”
44. “Treating all people equally is more likely to lead away from truth than toward it.”
45. “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.”
46. “Remember that most people will pretend to operate in your interest while operating in their own.”
47. “Pain + Reflection = Progress”
48. “It’s more important to do big things well than to do the small things perfectly.”
49. “Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine.”
50. “In trading you have to be defensive and aggressive at the same time. If you are not aggressive, you are not going to make money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep money.”
Ray Dalio Quotes To Live By
51. “It can be any kind of long-term challenge that leads to personal improvement.”
52. “Getting a lot of attention for being successful is a bad position to be in.”
53. “What you will be will depend on the perspective you have.”
54. “Learn about your people and have them learn about you through frank conversations about mistakes and their root causes.”
55. “It is far more common for people to allow ego to stand in the way of learning.”
56. “In thoughtful disagreement, both parties are motivated by the genuine fear of missing important perspectives.”
57. “To be principled means to consistently operate with principles that can be clearly explained.”
58. “The challenges you face will test and strengthen you. If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.”
59. “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.”
60. “Great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.”
Motivational Ray Dalio Quotes
61. “Don’t let the little things divide you when your agreement on the big things should bind you.”
62. “The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.”
63. “Getting the right people in the right roles in support of your goal is the key to succeeding at whatever you choose to accomplish.”
64. “Money is a byproduct of excellence, not a goal.”
65. “Don’t just pay attention to your job; pay attention to how your job will be done if you are no longer around.”
66. “If you just keep doing, you will burn out and grind to a halt.”
67. “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.”
68. “Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.”
69. “It’s tough to be tough on people.”
70. “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”
More Ray Dalio Quotes
71. “Tough love is effective for achieving both great work and great relationships.”
72. “Any damn fool can make it complex. It takes a genius to make it simple”
73. “Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way.”
74. “Wekanesses don’t matter if you find solutions to them.”
73. “Don’t mistake possibilities for probabilities. Anything is possible. It’s the probabilities that matter. Everything must be weighed in terms of its likelihood and prioritized.”
74. “The most important thing is that you develop your own principles and ideally write them down, especially if you are working with others.”
75. “Remember that people who see things and think one way often have difficulty communicating with and relating to people who see things and think another way.”
76. “If you limit your goals to what you know you can achieve, you are setting the bar way too low.”
77. “The most valuable habit I’ve acquired is using pain to trigger quality reflections. If you can acquire this habit yourself, you will learn what causes your pain and what you can do about it, and it will have an enormous impact on your effectiveness.”
78. “If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential”
79. “Don’t worry about looking good; worry about achieving your goal.” – Ray Dalio Quotes
80. “Understand that a great manager is essentially an organizational engineer.”
81. “Thoughtful disagreement is not a battle; its goal is not to convince the other party that he or she is wrong and you are right, but to find out what is true and what to do about it.”
82. “Weaknesses don’t matter if you find solutions to them.”
83. “Everyone has weaknesses. They are generally revealed in the patterns of mistakes they make.”
84. “Our brains work like computers: They input data and process it in accordance with their wiring and programming. Any opinion you have is made up of these two things: the data and your processing or reasoning”
85. “Don’t hire people just to fit the first job they will do; hire people you want to share your life with.”
86. “The courage that’s needed the most isn’t the kind that drives you to prevail over others, but the kind that allows you to be true to your truest self, no matter what other people want you to be.”
87. “People who do this fail because they are stubbornly stuck in their own heads.”