"This object of great beauty—even in its stricken condition—went down with a terrifying roar…a sound that survivors later described as the most bloodcurdling they had ever heard."

"Not only had they behaved dutifully and without apparent concern for their own safety, but they also offered the hope that not all of the younger male generation were venial, lazy, proud, irreligious, inconsiderate, self-indulgent, weak-willed, and timorous."

"“They were brave and splendid, all the men. They died like brave men.”"

"“The notes of this music were the last thing I heard before I went off the poop and felt myself going headlong into the icy water with the engines and machinery buzzing in my ears.”"

"“I shall never forget the sight of that beautiful boat as she went down, the orchestra playing to the last, the lights burning until they were extinguished by the waves. It sounds so unreal, like a scene on the stage.”"

"“I could hear the band playing a cheery sort of music. I don’t like jazz music as a rule, but I was glad to hear it that night. I think it helped us all.”"

"“The ship’s orchestra of eight young men were standing knee deep in water playing.”"

"[Bandleader Hartley] apparently believed that music could be more powerful that physical force in bringing order to chaos."

"Despite the awfulness of what was happening, the backdrop was a scene of beauty: a clear sky, a bright moon, clearly visible stars, flat undisturbed water, and an immense liner blazing with pinholes of light."

"They kept it up until the very end. Only the engulfing ocean had power to drown them into silence."

"The story of their gallantry came to epitomize a spirit of courage, duty and self-sacrifice."

"The musicians had played on the deck as the ship went down. They had forfeited their lives for the sake of others. They had played the tunes of hymns to induce a spirit of peace and calm. They were heroic."

"Shipwreck was an ever-present possibility in 1912."

"In the last moments of the great ship’s doom, when all was plainly lost, when braver and hardier men might almost have been excused for doing practically anything to save themselves, they stood responsive to their conductor’s baton and played a recessional tune."

"“No praise could be sufficient for those courageous musicians whom we left behind. They were heroes to a man.”"

"It was 11:45 at night according to ship’s time when the Titanic grazed along the iceberg that would send it to the ocean bed."

"In the whole history of the sea, there is little to equal the wonderful behavior of these humble players."

"The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails."

"The problem with winning at blackjack and sports betting is that sooner or later a big guy in a suit tells you to leave."

"To hedge the bets he made every working day, Meriwether kept a set of rosary beads in his briefcase."

"The image of the lighted ship sliding under the waves, while the band carried on regardless, captured the public’s imagination."

"Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet."

"There is a deep connection between Bernoulli's dictum and John Kelly's 1956 publication. It turns out that Kelly's prescription can be restated as this simple rule: When faced with a choice of wagers or investments, choose the one with the highest geometric means of outcomes."

"For reasons mathematical, psychological, and sociological, it is a good idea to use a money management system that is relatively forgiving of estimation errors."

"Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway."

"Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods."

"Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero."

"The engine driving the Kelly system is the "law of large numbers." In a 1713 treatise on probability, Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli propounded a law that has been misunderstood by gamblers (and investors) ever since."

"From Adam Smith through John Maynard Keynes, economics had been mostly talk. At Harvard economics was talk. At MIT, Samuelson made it math."

""Average" isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. "Average" is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small."

"Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone; the stock market."

"The story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy."

"Bernoulli's real contribution was to coin a word. The word has been translated into English as "utility". It describes this subjective value people place on money."

"A bit is worth 10,000 basis points."

"The dealer now theorized that Thorp was memorizing the entire deck. He knew exactly which cards remained in the deck and bet accordingly. Thorp said it was impossible for any one to do that."

"As the screams in the water multiplied, another sound was heard, strong and clear at first, then fainter in the distance. It was the melody of the hymn “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” played by the string orchestra in the dining saloon."

"Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant."

"In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other."

"The more improbable the message, the less "compressible" it is, and the more bandwidth it requires. This is Shannon's point: the essence is its improbability."

"Far from preventing gambler's ruin, martingale accelerates it."

"There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon."

"In American culture the coin toss is the paradigm of the random event. A coin toss decides who kicks off the Super Bowl. Looked at another way, a coin toss is not random at all. It is physics."

"Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is."

"Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children."

"At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox."

"Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science."

"The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes."

"The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur—what species of impossibilities are possible."

"The best strategy is one that offers the highest compound return consistent with no risk of going broke."