Art & Creativity Quote by Bernard Baruch

A businessman who made his name in the chaos of markets doesn’t romanticize serenity; he prices it. Baruch’s line is a rebuke to the fantasy that a well-run life is a frictionless one. “Eliminating” troubles sounds like the managerial dream: optimize the system, remove errors, get back to growth. He rejects that as both impossible and, more cuttingly, immature. The move is subtle: he doesn’t glorify suffering, but he strips it of its scandal. Trouble isn’t a glitch in the program; it’s the program.

The verb choice matters. “Growing with” troubles implies companionship, even negotiation. Not conquering, not enduring, not merely coping. It suggests a person who treats adversity the way a seasoned operator treats volatility: as information. In Baruch’s world, risk can’t be abolished; it can be understood, hedged, and occasionally turned into leverage. That’s the subtext: the competent adult doesn’t wait for conditions to improve before living. They build a life elastic enough to move when conditions don’t.

The historical context sharpens the point. Baruch lived through panics, a world war, the Great Depression, another world war, and the birth of the Cold War. Stability was never the baseline; disruption was. So the “art of living” here isn’t self-help pablum, it’s a philosophy forged in repeated shocks: resilience as a craft, not a mood. The line flatters no one, but it offers a bracing freedom: you don’t need to win against trouble to get on with your life. You need to get bigger than it.