The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time, to have a view that is at variance with the present consensus and bet that view.

When your views are truly contrarian, they are inevitably uncomfortable. Courage and the ability to withstand pain are required.

Good investing is a peculiar balance between the conviction to follow your ideas and the flexibility to recognize when you have made a mistake.

A good trader has to have three things: a chronic inability to accept things at face value, to feel continuously unsettled, and to have humility.

If you see a wonderful archaic Greek marble object in a museum, it's not only that it's beautiful, but what comes to your mind is the fact that it's 2,600 or so years old, and it was done by a human being at that time who you have such a limited ability to grasp - and yet you have this enormous ability to grasp.

One of the most important analytic tools when assessing an investment is an intellectually advantaged disparate view. This includes knowing more and perceiving the situation better than others do. It is also critical to have a keen understanding of what the market expectations for any investment truly are. Thus, the process by which a disparate perception, when correct, becomes consensus should lead to meaningful profit. Understanding market expectation is at least as important as, and often different from fundamental knowledge.

The hardest thing over the years has been having the courage to go against the dominant wisdom of the time to have a view that is at variance with the present consensus and bet that view. The hard part is that the investor must measure himself not by his own perceptions of his performance, but by the objective measure of the market. The market has its own reality. In an immediate emotional sense the market is always right so if you take a variant point of view you will always be bombarded for some time by conventional wisdom as expressed by the market.