Investor quotes
What the great value investors actually said
55 attributed quotes from Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Charlie Munger, Peter Lynch, Philip Fisher, Joel Greenblatt, Terry Smith, John Templeton, Howard Marks, and others. Each entry has a source where verifiable. Paraphrased entries are tagged when the exact wording varies across sources.
On price vs value
The single most repeated lesson in the value-investing canon. Price is the number on the screen; value is the thing the number is trying to estimate.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.
It is far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
Whether socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.
An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.
Choosing individual stocks without any idea of what you are looking for is like running through a dynamite factory with a burning match. You may live, but you are still an idiot.
On patience
The hardest discipline in markets is doing nothing. The legends say so over and over because most of us are terrible at it.
The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.
Our favorite holding period is forever.
The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.
Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.
Buy good companies. Do not overpay. Do nothing.
Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.
On risk
Risk is not volatility. Risk is permanent capital loss, and the best investors define it that way.
Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.
Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing.
The investor's chief problem and even his worst enemy is likely to be himself.
Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.
Volatility is far from synonymous with risk. Risk is the permanent loss of capital.
Never invest in any idea you cannot illustrate with a crayon.
On mistakes
Every great investor talks about their losers publicly. The ones who hide their mistakes are usually the ones to avoid.
I have made many mistakes. The trick is to make sure none of them are fatal.
It is not the same as being wrong. Being wrong is part of the deal. Being stupid is not.
We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.
I will tell you the secret of getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful, and you try to be fearful when others are greedy.
On crowds and contrarianism
Going with the crowd produces average results by definition. Going against it produces exceptional results, or ruin.
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
The wise investor can profit if he can think independently of the crowd and reach the rich answer when the majority of financial opinion is leaning the other way.
The four most dangerous words in investing are: this time it is different.
Buy when there is blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.
Bull markets are born in pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria.
On business quality
The post-Graham evolution. Quality at a fair price compounded beats cheapness at any price.
Look for businesses with high returns on capital that can reinvest at those returns.
Even in those earlier times, finding the really outstanding companies and staying with them through all the fluctuations of a gyrating market proved far more profitable to far more people than did the more colorful practice of trying to buy them cheap and sell them dear.
When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.
Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it is doing.
The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power.
On knowing what you do not know
The circle of competence is the most underrated concept in investing. Inside it, you can compound. Outside it, you lose.
Knowing what you do not know is more useful than being brilliant.
It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.
Invert, always invert. Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.
I have never invested in any stock without first being able to predict its earnings five years out, plus or minus.
The first rule of compounding: never interrupt it unnecessarily.
On compounding
Einstein never called it the eighth wonder of the world (that quote is apocryphal), but the legends who actually run capital believe it is.
My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest.
Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
If you do not find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.
On selling
Most retail investors think too much about when to buy and too little about when to sell. The right answer is usually rarely.
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
We do not have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.
Selling your winners and holding your losers is like cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
On process and temperament
The IQ matters less than the patience to follow a documented process. Most investors fail on process, not on math.
Know what you own, and know why you own it.
The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game.
If you cannot explain a business in two sentences to a 10-year-old, you do not understand the business.
Take a simple idea and take it seriously.
Buy good businesses at bargain prices.
I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I do not believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody is that smart.
The most important investment you can make is in yourself.
Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take 800 dollars and go to Las Vegas.
Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.
Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
Related
- Investor wiki - deep profiles on each of the seven framework investors
- Methodology - how invest-like operationalizes each investor's framework
- Working papers - the 7-framework consensus methodology + AAOIFI screen
- Track record - live cohort returns from the consensus screen
- Value investing explained - the canonical explainer with the seven frameworks side by side
Editorial note
Quote sourcing is harder than it looks. Where the exact wording varies between sources (which happens often with Buffett and Munger, who repeat ideas across decades), we pick the most widely-cited variant and tag the entry as paraphrased. If you can produce a primary-source citation we missed, email hello@invest-like.com with the year, source, and verbatim text. Material corrections land within 48 hours.
invest-like is an editorial / educational tool. Quotes attributed here are reproduced for educational use under fair-use conventions. Where the original work is in print, buy the book.