Why do intelligent investors repeat the identical generation of errors in response to the generation? Because financial instincts – resembling fear, envy and superconscious – are ancient, persistent and terribly unsuitable for contemporary markets. Fortunately, the financial history leaves a paper lane out of wisdom, wit and hard -fought lessons. Sometimes a single quote can do more to correct a foul habit than 100 charts.
That brought us together. On March 19, 2025 I met Rachel Kloeperfer. It was right after my keynote presentation on Second annual conference for Advanced Investment Management (IAIM) At the University of Utah. My lecture emphasized how investors can use financial history to realize a deeper understanding of the present financial events and a clearer vision of the long run. I concluded with a number of quotes from the past – precise and everlasting truths with which the participants could make higher decisions.
After that, Rachel – a former journalist and colleague in financial history – proposed to expand the list. We implemented a whole bunch of quotations. Some are serious, others are funny, but everyone comes from individuals who have experienced the financial highs and depths of the past 200 years.
The result’s a curated sentence of 30 quotations exclusively for grouped by the Vice to avoid the Virtue adopt and just a little humor Stay healthy through the whole lot. We have chosen timeless quotes to resonate over generations and reminds that they still have something in investments or a long time of their profession to still teach history.
Vice
The most tragic mistakes in finance are those who we could have avoided – if we had only learned from the past. However, these mistakes remain because our instincts, once essential for survival, often backfire within the markets. Until evolution catches up, our greatest technique of historical awareness. The following quotes underline among the most harmful investors. If you commit you to the memory, you may resist these patterns – and the mental capability free that’s obligatory to cultivate more productive virtues.
envy
-J. Pierpont Morgan, financially
impatience
– James Buchan, writer of
dishonesty
—Charlie Munger, deceased chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
hubris
Louis Brandeis, writer of
Overconscious
– George H. Lorimer, merchant from the nineteenth century
Self -satisfaction
– Georges Doriot, founding father of risk capital
refusal
– John Kenneth Galbraith, financial historian
Rethink
—Charlie Munger, deceased chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Herd behavior
– David Swensen, deceased CIO of the Yale University Foundation
Blind faith
– John Kenneth Galbraith, financial historian
Virtue
Losing harmful instincts is simply the start. The next step is to fill this room with virtues – a way more difficult task. Vice are common and instinctive; Virtues are behavioral anomalies. The strongest virtues are rarely to be released and even easier to forget. The following 10 quotes come from financial heads, which successfully navigated among the most irreconcilable markets in US history. To commit them to the memory is a strong next step to turn into a more clever investor.
devotion
– Aalexander Hamilton, First US Finance Minister of the Ministry of Finance
thrift
– Edward Robinson, father of Hetty Green, the Queen of Wall Street
Self -discipline
– Bejamin Graham, founding father of the worth investment philosophy
competence
– Robert Noyce, founding father of the Intel Corporation
Historical awareness
– Put jobs, founding father of Apple Computer
Training
—Charlie Munger, deceased chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
humility
– Paul A. Volcker, deceased chairman of the Federal Reserve
Caution
– Hetty Green, the Queen of Wall Street
perspective
– Albert Einstein, Nobel Prize winner physicist
self-consciousness
– Don Valentine, founding father of Sequoia Capital
HUMOR
Finance and investments should not normally related to humor, but when human trucks are stretched to their limits, they often produce situations which are so outrageous that it’s difficult to not laugh. The following quotes come from witnesses to among the crazy moments in US finance history. We hope you’ll find humor in madness.
– Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
– Edwin Lefevre, financial journalist
– Robert Sobel, financial historian
– Hetty Green, the Queen of Wall Street
– Timothy Geithner, former secretary of the Ministry of Finance
– William Armstrong, a reformed stock player (1848)
– Hetty Green, the Queen of Wall Street
– John Kenneth Galbraith, financial historian
– David Swensen, late Cio des Yale Investment Office
– Jack Melchor, risk capital provider
Close thoughts
The 235-year history of US financing is full of villains, plans and spectacular missteps. So it’s fair to ask: How can we remain confident in such a system? The answer is that the financial history can be wealthy in heroism, ingenuity and selflessness – forces which have steadily controlled progress. The way forward isn’t linear, but over time this technique worked higher than the alternatives.
For this reason, it is vital to bridge generation gaps within the investment industry and be certain that future managers profit from the hard -earned lessons of the past. Also as knowledge connections may also be a historically more sound and assured economic system.
Like most of the knowledge shared here, this just isn’t recent. In 1940, Fred Swed Jr., a classic who spoils the Wall Street with unmatched humor – and still got here to the identical conclusion that we now have. Capitalism is inaccurate, but it surely works. So we let Swed Jr. have the last word. Despite our efforts, we just couldn’t say it higher.
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Fred Swed Jr., writer of
