Andrew Tobias Quotes

The larger the deductible you choose, the less insurance you are buying. Insurers want to sell insurance.

Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.

The life insurance policies advertised on the radio with the line "You cannot be turned down for this coverage!" are actually saying, " For policies this small, it would cost us more to decide whom to turn down than simply to accept everybody-and make them pay through the nose.

Still, most people don't have much money. So finding ways to come out a couple of thousand dollars ahead every year still matters.

You want 21 percent risk free? Pay off your credit cards.

There are only two things as complicated as insurance accounting and I have no idea what they are.

There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.

There's no question young drivers have far more accidents than older ones-but is it our aim to keep them off the roads? Or to allow only rich young people (who can afford the premiums) to drive?

The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.

Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage ( including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit.

Now listen. You can't fool all the people all the time
but I want you to try.

In short: Readily available low-cost life insurance would be a threat to the industry, and whatever threatens the life insurance industry threatens America.

Man's natural life span, 75 to 90 years or so, has not increased. It is the number of us who manage to attain it that has increased.

But successful investors tend to be not too self-destructive. They tend to be patient, they tend not to follow the crowd, and they tend not to be too guilty about winning.

It's very nice to be able to be who you are.

Hay fever suffers tend to be above average in intelligence, ...

Life insurance in America has traditionally been dominated by mutual insurers. Twelve of the fifteen largest life insurers are mutuals.

There's no such thing as altruism.

I was a writer for 'New York' magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.

What kind of bank gives back 65 percent-often less-of what you deposit? Indeed, when you compare the services of a bank and an insurance company, common sense suggests something is out of whack.

The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.