David Swensen Quotations

I wouldn't say that I have faith in hedge funds per se, but I have reasonable faith in our ability to discriminately select high-quality partners, ... You're seeing a lot of hedge fund problems now because there's such mindless enthusiasm on the part of the public. A lot of the entrants are low-quality, and you've got a lot of people crashing around doing dumb things.

I enjoyed my time on Wall Street, I learned a lot, and I still have a lot of friends there, but I never saw myself there long term, because when I looked at the senior guys there, that wasn't the kind of life I wanted for myself, ... Here, I'm supporting one of the world's great institutions.

I think what the people at GESO are doing is antithetical to everything that Yale stands for, ... They're just slinging mud.

I see every day how competitive the markets are, and how tough. So the idea that you can do this yourself, that's out the window.

Without Jim's mentorship, there's no way I would have completed my Ph.D. here, ... It was fair to say that I lacked direction, so Jim kind of took me under his wing.