You need to balance arrogance and humilitywhen you buy anything, it's an arrogant act. You are saying the markets are gyrating and somebody wants to sell this to me and I know more than everybody else so I am going to stand here and buy it. I am going to pay an 1/8th more than the next guy wants to pay and buy it. That's arrogant. And you need the humility to say 'but I might be wrong.' And you have to do that on everything
Seth KlarmanAlmost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians.
Seth KlarmanUnlike return, however, risk is no more quantifiable at the end of an investment that it was at its beginning. Risk simply cannot be described by a single number. Intuitively we understand that risk varies from investment to investment: a government bond is not as risky as the stock of a high-technology company. But investments do not provide information about their risks the way food packages provide nutritional data.
Seth KlarmanA tipping point is invisible, as we just saw in Greece. In most situations, everything appears fine until it's not fine, until, for example, no one shows up at a Treasury auction.
Seth KlarmanPatience and discipline can make you look foolishly out of touch until they make you look prudent and even prescient
Seth Klarman