Value investors have to be patient and disciplined, but what I really think is you need not to be greedy. If you're greedy and you leverage, you blow up. Almost every financial blow up is because of leverage.

Risk is not inherent in an investment; it is always relative to the price paid. Uncertainty is not the same as risk. Indeed, when great uncertainty - such as in the fall of 2008 - drives securities prices to especially low levels, they often become less risky investments.

Always remembering that we might be wrong, we must contemplate alternatives, concoct hedges, and search vigilantly for validation of our assessments. We always sell when a security's price begins to reflect full value, because we are never sure that our thesis will be precisely correct.

The stock market is the story of cycles and of the human behavior that is responsible for overreactions in both directions.

Value investors should completely exit a security by the time it reaches full value; owning overvalued securities is the realm of speculators.

Investors need to pick their poison: Either make more money when times are good and have a really ugly year every so often, or protect on the downside and don't be at the party so long when things are good.

Most institutional investors feel compelled to swing at almost every pitch and forgo batting selectivity for frequency.