# Quote — Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk

> If your ambition is to maximize short-term gain without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing the cost. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it's better never to really understand those problems. There is an upside to ignorance, and a downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview.

- Author: [Michael Lewis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis.md)
- Book: [The Fifth Risk](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/the-fifth-risk.md)
- Page: 77
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michael_Lewis_(author)#The_Fifth_Risk_(2018)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/the-fifth-risk/if-your-ambition

## More from this book

> People who had lived without government were more likely to find meaning in it. On the other hand, people who had never experienced a collapsed state were slow to appreciate a state that had not yet collapsed.

p. 24 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/michael-lewis/the-fifth-risk/people-who-had.md)