45 Inspirational Ray Dalio Quotes On Success

Ray Dalio is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. Dalio is the founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds which manages $160 Billion. In 2012, Dalio was featured in the Times 100 list of 100 most influential people in the world. In the year 2018, he released his own book, ‘Principles’ which went on to critical acclaim. In the book, he breaks down the principles of how to become successful, both in life and work. Bloomberg ranked him as the world’s 79th wealthiest person in January 2019. May his quotes inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.

1. “Having the basics, a good bed to sleep in, good relationships, good food – is most important, and those things don’t get much better when you have a lot of money or much worse when you have less. And the people one meets at the top aren’t necessarily more special than those one meets at the bottom or in between.” Ray Dalio

2. “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.” Ray Dalio

3. “Listening to uninformed people is worse than having no answers at all.” Ray Dalio

4. “I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.” Ray Dalio

5. “Time is like a river that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make decisions. We can’t stop our movement down this river and we can’t avoid those encounters. We can only approach them in the best possible way.” Ray Dalio

6. “Choose your habits well. Habit is probably the most powerful tool in your brain’s toolbox.” Ray Dalio

7. “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.” Ray Dalio

8. “The most important thing is that you develop your own principles and ideally write them down, especially if you are working with others.” Ray Dalio

9. “Above all else, I want you to think for yourself, to decide 1) What you want, 2) What is true and 3) What to do about it.” Ray Dalio

10. “If you can’t successfully do something, don’t think you can tell others how it should be done.” Ray Dalio

11. “If you don’t look on yourself and think, ‘Wow how stupid I was a year ago,’ then you must not have learned much in the last year.” Ray Dalio

12. “Remember that most people are happiest when they are improving and doing the things that suit them naturally and help them advance. So learning about your people’s weaknesses is just as valuable (for them and for you) as is learning their strengths.” Ray Dalio

13. “Remember that the only purpose of money is to get you what you want, so think hard about what you value and put it above money. How much would you sell a good relationship for? There’s not enough money in the world to get you to part with a valued relationship.” Ray Dalio

14. “Don’t just pay attention to your job; pay attention to how your job will be done if you are no longer around.” Ray Dalio

15. “Some people go through life collecting all kinds of observations and opinions like pocket lint, instead of just keeping what they need. They have ‘detail anxiety’, worrying about unimportant things.” Ray Dalio

16. “The people who work for you should constantly challenge you. Don’t hire people just to fit the first job they will do; hire people you want to share your life with.” Ray Dalio

17. “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.Believe it or not, your pain will fade and you will have many other opportunities ahead of you.” Ray Dalio

18. “If you don’t own gold, you know neither history nor economics.” Ray Dalio

19. “Most of life’s greatest opportunities come out of moments of struggle; it’s up to you to make the most of these tests of creativity and character.” Ray Dalio

20. “Don’t let the little things divide you when your agreement on the big things should bind you.” Ray Dalio

21. “Great is better than terrible, and terrible is better than mediocre, because terrible at least gives life flavor.” Ray Dalio

22. “There are two broad approaches to decision making: evidence/logic-based (which comes from the higher-level brain) and subconscious/emotion-based (which comes from the lower-level animal brain).” Ray Dalio

23. “Recognize that having an effective idea meritocracy requires that you understand the merit of each person’s ideas.” Ray Dalio

24. “Experience taught me how invaluable it is to reflect on and write down my decision-making criteria whenever I made a decision, so I got in the habit of doing that.” Ray Dalio

25. “You must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out what’s true.” Ray Dalio

26. “I believe that all organizations basically have two types of people: those who work to be part of a mission, and those who work for a paycheck.” Ray Dalio

27. “I came to see that people’s greatest weaknesses are the flip sides of their greatest strengths.” Ray Dalio

28. “Great people are hard to find so make sure you think about how to keep them.” Ray Dalio

29. “Making a handful of good uncorrelated bets that are balanced and leveraged well is the surest way of having a lot of upside without being exposed to unacceptable downside.” Ray Dalio

30. “I believe one of the most valuable things you can do to improve your decision making is to think through your principles for making decisions, write them out in both words and computer algorithms, back-test them if possible, and use them on a real-time basis to run in parallel with your brain’s decision making.” Ray Dalio

31. “To be ‘good’ something must operate consistently with the laws of reality and contribute to the evolution of the whole; that is what is most rewarded.” Ray Dalio

32. “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

33. “Idealists who are not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress.” Ray Dalio

34. “Remember that weaknesses don’t matter if you find solutions.” Ray Dalio

35. “Almost nothing can stop you from succeeding if you have flexibility and self-accountability.” Ray Dalio

36. “Most fundamental work principle: Make your passion and your work one and the same and do it with people you want to be with.” Ray Dalio

37. “School typically doesn’t prepare young people for real life – unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that’s why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.” Ray Dalio

38. “More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don’t is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively.” Ray Dalio

39. “Don’t worry about looking good – worry about achieving your goals.” Ray Dalio

40. “Every game has principles that successful players master to achieve winning results. So does life.” Ray Dalio

41. “I notice a difference from the moment I meditate. Meditation more than anything in my life was the biggest ingredient of whatever success I’ve had.” Ray Dalio

42. “I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.” Ray Dalio

43. “If your objective is to be as good, as you can be, then you’re going to want criticism.” Ray Dalio

44. “Treat your life like a game.” Ray Dalio

45. “By and large, life will give you what you deserve.” Ray Dalio

Check out Principles For Success by Ray Dalio: