Table of Contents
Why do smart investors repeat the generation of the same mistakes after generation? Because financial tendency – such as fear, jealousy and extreme confidence – are ancient, stubborn, and are very unsuitable for modern markets. Fortunately, the financial history surpasses a paper trail of knowledge, intelligence, and hard-won lessons. Sometimes, a single quotation can more to fix a bad habit than a hundred chart.
This is what brought us together. On March 19, 2025, I met Rachel Clofer. This was correct after my main presentation at the second annual Institute of Advanced Investment Management (IAIM) conference at Utah University. My point was emphasized how investors can use financial history to gain a deeper understanding of the current financial events and a clear vision of the future. I closed with some quotes from the past – the brief and permanent truth that I expected that the attendees could use to make better decisions.
Later, Rachel – a former journalist and fellow financial history enthusiast – suggested expanding the list. We peeped through hundreds of quotes. Some are serious, some are funny, but all come from people who lived through the last 200 years of financial high and climb.
The result is especially a curate set of 30 quotes Entrepreneur investor Grouped by Shortcoming to protect, Property To adopt, and little Humor To be sensible through all this. We chose the timeless quotes designed to be echoed in generations, reminding if you are new to invest in your career or for decades, there is still something to teach you in history.
Shortcoming
The most tragic mistakes in finance are those we could save from – if only we had learned from the past. Nevertheless, these errors remain because our tendency, once necessary to survive, often backfire in markets. Until development does not happen, our best solution is historical awareness. Quotes that highlight the most harmful investors vices. Committing them to memory can help you resist these patterns – and can free the mental ability required for cultivation of more productive properties.
jealousy
“Nothing reduces your financial decision because your neighbor is a vision to be rich.”
-J. Pierpont Morgan, Financial
Impatience
“Confusion lies in the concept of time. Great stock-market bulls want to condensed the future in a few days to give discounts on long march of bull history and occupy the current value of all future money. This is. This is. This is. This is. [their] Right now strict demand for everything – right now for the future in money – which cannot tolerate the future notion. ,
-Jams Buchan, Author Frozen desire: meaning of money
Dishonesty
“A business model that depends on tricks is wasted to fail.”
-Rhuli Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s late vice president
Pride
“The weakness of human nature prevents men from being their own qualified judges.”
,Louis Brandis, author of Other people money
Overcrowding
“When a bookie wins, he does not stop until he loses.”
-Jorge H. Lorimer, 19th century traders
Genuineness
“Always remember that there is a product that will make your product obsolete.”
-Jors Doriot, Founder Father of Venture Capital
denied
“The choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there was no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy with evidence.”
Zon Kenneth Galabreth, Financial Historians
overthinking
It is noteworthy that people like us have tried to take advantage for a long time that it is not constantly stupid instead of trying to be very intelligent. ,
-Rhuli Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s late vice president
cluster
“Once most players adopt a Hetofor Controrean position, the minority view becomes widely held perspective.”
-David Swenseen, Late CIO of Yale University Settlement
Superstition
“Investing people are fascinated and occupied by great financial minds. This attraction, in turn, feels the scale of financial operations and realizes that, with so many money involvement, mental resources may not be reduced behind them.”
Zon Kenneth Galabreth, Financial Historians
Property
The excuse to harmful instinct is only the beginning. The next step is to fill that place with qualities – far more difficult tasks. Vices are common and comfortable; Properties are behavioral discrepancies. The most powerful properties are rare, it is easy to dismiss, and even easy to forget. The following 10 quotes come from financial minds who successfully navigate some of the most disabled markets in American history. Committing them to memory is a powerful next step towards becoming a more skilled investor.
Passion
“Whatever talent I have, I live in it: When I have a subject in my hand, I study it deeply. It is in front of me day and night. My mind is spread with it. Then the effort I have made is that people are the ones who are happy to call the fruit of talent. It is the fruit of labor and thought.”
-Psender Hamilton, First US Secretary to Treasury
Impatience
“I smoke four-percent cigars and I like them. If I smoke better, I can lose my taste for cheap people that I find quite satisfactory now.”
-Adword Robinson, Hetty Green’s father, Queen of Wall Street
Self discipline
“Will have to undergo several decades, and I can do the simplest and most important master of all the rules of material welfare before becoming many: The most spectacular financial strategy involves living well through someone.”
-Benzamin Graham, founder of price investment philosophy
Capacity
“A small group of people who know what they are doing can complete more than a large group of those who do not know what they are doing.”
Noyes, founder of Intel Corporation
Historical awareness
“You can’t really understand what is going on now until you understand what came before.”
-Sstw Jobs, Founder of Apple Computer
Education
“Proper education is a long practice in the promotion of high cognition so that our intellect becomes very strong so that the wrong thinking created by resistance to change can be destroyed.”
-Rhuli Munger, Berkshire Hathaway’s late vice president
Politeness
“Economic forecast is a prudent maximum of business that is often ignored: choose a number or choose a date, but both never.”
-Pal a. Volcar, late chairman of Federal Reserve
Caution
“In business, do not stop a deal until you reflect on it overnight.”
—The Green, Queen of Wall Street
Perspective
“A cool and modest life brings more pleasure from the discovery of joint success with continuous discomfort.”
—Lebert Einstein, Nobel Prize winner Physical Winner
Self awareness
“A set of management skills is required to start a company and require another set to manage a large company. They are rarely residents in the same person.”
-Don Valentine’s founder
Humor
Finance and investment are usually not associated with humor, but when human vices spread to their boundaries, they often produce situations, so it is difficult that it is difficult to laugh. The following set of quotes comes from witnesses to some more crazy moments in American financial history. We hope you can find humor in madness.
“I try to invest in businesses that are so amazing that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, there will be one.”
-Areren Buffett, President of Berkshire Hathway
“In the history of every great destruction, you will find some master bit stupidity, which will set fire to oil soaked.”
Edwin Lefevere, Financial Journalist
“The period of speculative frenzy always attracts both miscreants and suckers for Wall Street, the way a three-alarm fire attracts audiences and pickpockets.”
-Robert Sobel, Financial Historians
“I have a lot of enemies … I tell you that Satan is afraid of me, as many of his satellites do here.”
—The Green, Queen of Wall Street
“It was an absurd sign of that time that became a sales point for an investment vehicle rather than a warning, it was like naming a new car model after a defective break.”
-Thimothy geithner, former secretary of Treasury
“When discovered by the nature of Rousse, they had anger, as well as imagined, may be unbended but fruitless, and they were obliged to satisfy themselves with great emphasis. [Jacob] Little once visited Boston, essentially part of the company with his ears. ,
-Releum Armstrong, a improved stock gambler (1848)
“If you have any money at that place [the Knickerbocker Trust]Remove the first thing tomorrow. The men of that bank look very good. You mark my words. ,
—The Green, Queen of Wall Street
“Men have been cheated by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929, perhaps, the first time when men were big success in cheating themselves.”
Zon Kenneth Galabreth, Financial Historians
“As a general rule of thumb, more complexity in a wall street construction, faster and forward investors should run.”
-David Swensen, Late CIO of Yale Investments Office
“The most common exit strategy was that we lost all our money.”
Jack Melchor, Venture Capitalist
Concluding idea
The 235-year-old history of US finance is full of miscreants, plans and excellent misS. So it is appropriate to ask: How can we be confident in such a system? The answer is that financial history is also rich in valor, simplicity and selflessness – forces in which continuous progress has been made. The further route is never linear, but over time, this system has done better than options.
This is the reason that it is necessary to bridge the generational interval in the investment industry and ensure that future leaders benefit from the lessons earned by the hard work of the past. In the form of knowledge compounds, therefore a more historically informed and self-conscious financial system can also occur.
Like many insights shared here, it is not new. In 1940, Fred Shwed Junior wrote Where are customers boats?A classic that slant Wall Street with unmatched humor – and still came to us to the same conclusion. Capitalism is flawed, but it works. So we will give the last word to Schwed Junior. Despite our best efforts, we can’t just call it better.
“I am a secretly fond of that wretched old Hug, capitalistic system, after seeing the performance of small rivals with his nature. I believe we had better preserved our financial machinery, even with a lot of nonsense we are working. Garage.,
I am ready to present an idea to the SEC that they may have thought about myself: they are in the position of a doctor, who has only one patient, in which there is no possibility to get the other. This will be a strategic error to kill this patient, even though a commendable scientific enthusiasm motivates the doctor to try his entire shelf of Pharmacopia on him. After all, there is no real danger in this case of the patient.
,Fred Shwed Junior, Author Where are the customers boat
