In the 1970s we saw a massive shift of household savings from the banks to the brokerage firms.
The founding fathers were not only brilliant, they were system builders and systematic thinkers. They came up with comprehensive plans and visions.
There is no country in the world where it's as easy to find venture capital in the stock market as the United States.
There is a kind of fear, approaching a panic, that's spreading through the Baby Boom Generation, which has suddenly discovered that it will have to provide for its own retirement.
One of the very nice things about investing in the stock market is that you learn about all different aspects of the economy. It's your window into a very large world.
Early on, New York already had a national and even international identity.
What I find very interesting about the mutual funds managers is that here are people who are the new masters of the universe. They're managing billions, yet they're subject to this quiet daily tyranny of numbers.
I don't think that a mutual fund that invests exclusively in biotech start-ups or invests exclusively in companies in Thailand offers any great safety or diversification.
I'm a biographer; I can live with a little hyperbole.
Stock market corrections, although painful at the time, are actually a very healthy part of the whole mechanism, because there are always speculative excesses that develop, particularly during the long bull market.
When news of the crash came, probably a lot of people in small towns and farms across America felt a sense of grim satisfaction that the sinners had finally been punished for their wicked ways.
Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.
Every time I wrote fiction, I was discouraged, and every time I wrote nonfiction, I was encouraged.
I felt blessed by the existence of Horace Porter's 'Campaigning With Grant.'
I find that when I come upon something that I think is a historical revelation, I have the sort of adrenaline rush that I imagine a gambler gets in Las Vegas when he hits the jackpot. It's still tremendously exciting to me, and I think all of my peers in the business feel the same way.
It's a shameful thing to admit for someone who writes such long books, but I read so slowly that I almost subvocalize.
With any piece of writing, you're hoping that it will change something, and it seldom does.
I was quite bowled over by Isabel Wilkerson's masterly saga, 'The Warmth of Other Suns.'
There were 900 books on Washington when I began writing on him.
I'm disturbed by the words missing from the Trump campaign: Liberty, justice, freedom, and tolerance.