Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

Speaking to graduating seniors, Lewis traces his own unlikely path from art history student to bond salesman to bestselling author and credits much of it to chance. He links that story to the lesson of Moneyball and to a psychology study about a spare cookie, arguing that fortunate people should recognize their luck and the responsibility it brings.

• Lewis left Princeton with an art history degree and no clear sense of his market value.
• A chance dinner seating led to a job at Salomon Brothers and his first book, Liar's Poker.
• People tend to explain their success as inevitable and play down the role of accident.
• Moneyball showed that even closely measured athletes were misvalued because luck was ignored.
• In a Berkeley experiment, randomly chosen leaders took the extra cookie as if they had earned it.
• Those who have been lucky owe something to people who have not.

Lewis writes in short, conversational sentences with self-deprecating jokes and quick pivots from anecdote to argument. Retyping this speech teaches comic timing, plain diction, and how a single concrete story can carry a moral point.

These excerpts are short quotations for practice and commentary. All rights stay with the author; read the whole essay at the original source.