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.

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

The balance between confidence and humility is best learned through extensive experience and mistakes.

Just as outright euphoria is often a sign of a market top, fear is for sure a sign of a market bottom. Time and time again, in every market cycle I have witnessed, the extremes of emotion always appear, even among experienced investors. When the world wants to buy only treasury bills, you can almost close your eys and get long stocks.

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.

I was happier when pursuing success than I was when savoring its fruits; the attraction, perhaps the addiction, was in the process, as much as in its end.

Brokerage firms don't sell customers stock so much as they sell those horrible mutual funds