An Empire, If You Can Keep It

1. From Ray Dalio's book, Principles: "when in doubt, get out. If you don't want to be in a civil war or a war, you should get out while the getting is good. History has shown that when things get bad, the doors typically close for people who want to leave. The same is true for investments and money..."

2. From William James, USA philosopher (1899): "I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride , if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top."