100+ Investment Quotes That Will Motivate You
There are several investors in the financial/stock markets, but only a few are remembered for their success. This compilation of top 100 investment quotes
Below are some of the greatest investment quotes, sayings, and lessons.
Quotes from Sir John Templeton
1. “For all long-term investors, there is only one objective – maximum total real return after taxes”
2. “Don’t panic. The time to sell is before the crash, not after.”
3. “Remember, no investment is forever.”
4. “The wise investor recognizes that success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions.”
5. “The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.’”
6. “If you want to become really wealthy, you must have your money work for you.”
7. “The difference in the effort was quite small—only an “extra ounce.” But the results, in terms of accomplishment and the quality of the achievement, were often dramatic.”
8. “If you earn a dollar and spend a dollar ten, you’ll be a failure. But if you earn a dollar and spend ninety cents, you’re on the road to success!”
9. “Defer pleasure until the job is done.”
10. “The best time to invest is when you have money.”
Quotes from Warren Buffett
11. “Rule number 1: Never lose money. Rule number 2: Don’t forget rule number 1.”
12. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
13. “Our favorite holding period is forever.”
14. “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”
15. You’re dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it’s like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O.K.”
16. “All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies.”
17. “I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”
18. “Never invest in businesses you can’t understand.”
19. “If you don’t feel comfortable owning a stock for 10 years, you shouldn’t own it for 10 minutes.”
20. “It is far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
21. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.”
22. “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”
23. “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for ten years.”
24. “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.”
25. In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.”
26. “I don’t look to jump over seven-foot bars; I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over.”
Quotes from Robert Rolih
27. “Love risk when making money. Hate risk when investing money.”
28. “Investing is simple. It’s the financial industry that works hard to make it complex!”
29. “The most popular investing products are the worst ones for investors.”
30. “Short-term trading is very time-consuming. That is why even “successful” short-term traders can easily have negative real ROI.”
31. “If you are playing the rigged game of investing, the house always wins.”
32. “When investing, more effort means worse results, most of the time.”
33. “Trying to pick the stocks that outperform the average is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
34. “You have 30 to 50 times better chances of creating a successful business than at succeeding as a short-term trader.”
35. “Trading the markets is a totally self-centered activity. Nobody’s life gets better because you trade. Except for your broker’s life.”
36. “Knowing the right detail gets you a great return. Ignore them and you just crash & burn.”
Quotes from Peter Lynch
37. “Nobody can predict interest rates, the future direction of the economy or the stock market. Dismiss all such forecasts and concentrate on what’s actually happening to the companies in which you’ve invested.”
38. “The trick is not to learn to trust your gut feelings, but rather to discipline yourself to ignore them. Stand by your stocks as long as the fundamental story of the company hasn’t changed.”
39. “Know what you own, and know why you own it”
40. “Whenever you invest in any company, you’re looking for its market cap to rise. This can’t happen unless buyers are paying higher prices for the shares, making your investment more valuable.”
41. “Go for a business that any idiot can run – because sooner or later any idiot probably is going to be running it.”
42.“stick with a steady and consistent performer”
43. “Look for small companies that are already profitable and have proven that their concept can be replicated. Be suspicious of companies with growth rates of 50 to 100 percent a year.”
44. “Find something you enjoy doing and give it everything you’ve got, and the money will take care of itself.”
45. “Understand the nature of the companies you own and the specific reasons for holding the stock. (“It is really going up!” doesn’t count.)”
46. “If you invest $1,000 in a stock, all you can lose is $1,000, but you stand to gain $10,000 or even $50,000 over time if you’re patient.”
Quotes from John D. Rockefeller
47. “The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.”
48. “Giving should be entered into in just the same way as investing. Giving is investing.”
49. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
50. “If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.”
51. “Save when you can and not when you have to.”
52. “The impression was gaining ground with me that it was a good thing to let the money be my slave and not make myself a slave to money.”
53. “I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.”
54. “Get rich by taking something common and making it uncommon.”
55. “It has always been my rule in business to make everything count.”
56. “Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.”
Quotes from Charlie Munger
57. “The big money is not in the buying or selling but in the waiting.”
58. “Spend each day trying to be a little wise than you were when you wake up.”
59. “Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
60. “Choose clients as you would friends.”
61. “A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments.”
62. “All intelligent investing is value investing, acquiring more than you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.”
63. “We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one.”
64. “Simplicity has a way of improving performance by enabling us to better understand what we are doing.”
65. “A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.”
66. “Once you get into debt, it’s hell to get out. Don’t let credit card debt carry over. You can’t get ahead paying eighteen percent.”
Quotes from Jim Rogers
67. “Never act upon wishful thinking. Act without checking the facts, and chances are that you will be swept away along with the mob.”
68. “If anybody laughs at your idea, view it as a sign of potential success!”
69. “Tough times helped many commodities producers become lean and mean through consolidation, mergers, and cost-cutting. All that excess supply has been sopped up.”
70. “Not one country in existence today has had the same borders and government for as long as two hundred years. The world will continue changing.”
71. “Nearly every time I strayed from the herd, I’ve made a lot of money. Wandering away from the action is the way to find the new action.”
72. “There is nothing better than having to struggle and make your own way.”
73. “money is the lance, not the grail”
74. “I think this is also a great time to invest in private equity, helping companies grow from the ground up.”
75. “Index investing outperforms active management year after year.”
76. “Bottoms in the investment world don’t end with four-year lows; they end with 10- or 15-year lows.”
Quotes from Paul Samuelson
77. “Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”
78. “Economics is a choice between alternatives all the time. Those are the trade-offs.”
79. “Investing should be dull. It shouldn’t be exciting.”
80. “The remarkable fact is not how much government does to control economic activity, but how much it does not do.”
81. “We’ve become a debtor nation. I don’t mean just on fixed-loan terms, but we own increasingly less abroad than is owned from abroad here.”
81. “Avoiding inflation is not an absolute imperative but rather is one of a number of conflicting goals that we must pursue and that we may often have to compromise.”
82. “Take a little bad psychology, add a dash of bad philosophy and ethics, and liberal quantities of bad logic, and any economist can prove that the demand curve for a commodity is negatively inclined.”
83. “I decided that there was only one place to make money in the mutual fund business, as there is only one place for a temperate man to be in a saloon: behind the bar and not in front of it.”
84. “It is dead wrong about the necessary surplus of winnings over losings.”
85. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Benjamin Graham Investment Quotes
86. “The underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.”
87. “If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.”
88. “Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.”
89. “To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.“
90. “Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.”
91. “As in roulette, the same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.”
92. “The margin of safety is always a function of the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, and non-existent and some still higher price.”
93. “The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.”
94. “There are two requirements for success in Wall Street. One, you have to think correctly; and secondly, you have to think independently.”
95. “The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.”
96. “The investor’s chief problem and even his worst enemy is likely to be himself.”
Jesse Livermore Investment Quotes
97. “At long as a stock is acting right, and the market is right, do not be in a hurry to take profits. One should never permit speculative ventures to run into investments.”
98. “Markets are never wrong – opinions often are.”
99. “The market does not beat them. They beat themselves, because though they have brains they cannot sit tight.”
100. “The average man doesn’t wish to be told that it is a bull or a bear market. What he desires is to be told specifically which particular stock to buy or sell. He wants to get something for nothing. He does not wish to work. He doesn’t even wish to have to think.”
101. “There is only one side to the stock market, and it is not the bull side or the bear side, but the right side”
102. “If I buy stocks on Smith’s tip I must sell those same stocks on Smith’s tip. I am depending on him. Suppose Smith is away on a holiday when the selling time comes around?
103. A man must believe in himself and his judgment if he expects to make a living at this game. That is why I don’t believe in tips.”
104. “A prudent speculator never argues with the tape. Markets are never wrong, opinions often are.”
105. “Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.”
John Bogle Investment Quotes
106. “To earn the highest of returns that are realistically possible, you should invest with simplicity.”
107. “Lower costs are the handmaiden of higher returns.”
108. ”The boom and the bust were normal—just two more swings in stock returns over the past century. Reversion to the mean is the iron rule of the financial markets.”
109. “Time is your Friend, Impulse is your enemy.”
110. “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”
111. “Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”
113. “The mutual fund industry has been built, in a sense, on witchcraft.”
114. “Buying funds based purely on their past performance is one of the stupidest things an investor can do.”
115. “The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions.”
Charlie Munger Investment Quotes
116. “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.”
117. “Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world.”
118. “All intelligent investing is value investing – acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.”
119. “I think we have one big advantage. A lot of other people are trying to be brilliant, and we’re just trying to stay rational … Trying to be brilliant is dangerous, particularly when gambling.”
120. “The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.”
121. “We have a passion for keeping things simple.”
122. “All intelligent investing is value investing – acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.”
Quotes from Grant Cardone
123. “Never lower your target; increase your actions.”
124. “There’s no shortage of money, only of people thinking big enough.”
125. “Your greatness is limited only by the investments you make in yourself.”
126. “Average is a failing formula.”
127. “Don’t just make money, make a difference.”
128. “Cash flow is not bragging rights. It’s financial freedom.”
129. “Have a higher purpose than money.”
130. “Focus on the target, not the work.”
131. “Rich people invest. Poor people spend.”
132. “I openly detest Wall Street, stocks, 401k’s, and bond investing. I despise the banks, who pay almost nothing to hold my cash, and then lend it out at 9X. I only invest in cash flow producing real estate.”