100 Best Investment Quotes of All Time (The Ultimate List)

You cannot afford to hire Warren Buffett as your financial advisor. You probably can't get a lunch meeting with Ray Dalio, either.

But you can still be mentored by them.

The beautiful thing about investing is that the rules rarely change. The wisdom that worked in 1925 often works in 2025.

Reading the right quote at the right time can stop you from panic-selling, encourage you to buy the dip, or remind you that "boring" is usually profitable.

Here is the ultimate collection of the 100 greatest investing quotes of all time, categorized to help you find exactly what you need to hear today.

The Top 10: The "Golden Rules"

If you only memorize ten things, make it these.

1. "The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient." — Warren Buffett

🐂 Takeaway: Patience is your only edge. If you can wait longer than Wall Street, you win.

2. "The four most dangerous words in investing are: 'This time it’s different.'" — Sir John Templeton

🐂 Takeaway: Human nature never changes. Bubbles burst. Markets crash. Don't think 2025 is special.

3. "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." — Warren Buffett

🐂 Takeaway: It feels terrible to buy when stocks are crashing. Do it anyway.

4. "In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine." — Benjamin Graham

🐂 Takeaway: Hype drives stock prices today. Profits drive stock prices eventually.

5. "Know what you own, and know why you own it." — Peter Lynch

🐂 Takeaway: "Because my Uber driver told me to" is not a valid investment thesis.

6. "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it." — Albert Einstein

🐂 Takeaway: Start early. Time is more powerful than money.

7. "Don't look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!" — John Bogle

🐂 Takeaway: Don't try to pick the one winning stock. Buy the whole market (Index Funds).

8. "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing." — Warren Buffett

🐂 Takeaway: Education is the best risk management tool you have.

9. "The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator." — Benjamin Graham

🐂 Takeaway: An investor buys a business. A speculator bets on a stock price. Know the difference.

10. "Spending money to show people how much money you have is the fastest way to have less money." — Morgan Housel

🐂 Takeaway: Wealth is what you don't see.

On Psychology & Emotion (The "Mental Game")

11. "Investing is not the study of finance. It’s the study of how people behave with money." — Morgan Housel
12. "A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments." — Charlie Munger
13. "If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn't be in stocks." — John Bogle
14. "The investor’s chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself." — Benjamin Graham
15. "Your success in investing will depend in part on your character and guts, and in part on your ability to realize that at the height of ebullience and the depth of despair alike, this too shall pass." — Jack Bogle
16. "Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas." — Paul Samuelson
17. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." — John Maynard Keynes
18. "Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria." — Sir John Templeton
19. "You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets." — Peter Lynch
20. "Courage taught me no matter how bad a crisis gets ... any sound investment will eventually pay off." — Carlos Slim Helu

On Value Investing (Finding Bargains)

21. "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." — Warren Buffett
22. "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price." — Warren Buffett
23. "All intelligent investing is value investing." — Charlie Munger
24. "Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it is doing." — Peter Lynch
25. "The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing." — Philip Fisher
26. "Invest in what you know." — Peter Lynch
27. "Big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting." — Charlie Munger
28. "Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1." — Warren Buffett
29. "Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing." — Warren Buffett
30. "If you aren't willing to own a stock for 10 years, don't even think about owning it for 10 minutes." — Warren Buffett

On Risk & Mistakes (Keeping Your Money)

31. "It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong." — George Soros
32. "Don’t test the depth of the river with both feet." — Warren Buffett
33. "Diversification is protection against ignorance." — Warren Buffett
34. "History provides a crucial insight regarding market crises: they are inevitable, painful and ultimately surmountable." — Shelby M.C. Davis
35. "The biggest risk of all is not taking one." — Mellody Hobson
36. "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." — Warren Buffett
37. "If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need." — Warren Buffett
38. "Rapid trading does not make you rich; it makes your broker rich." — Benjamin Graham
39. "Bubbles are mathematically impossible to spot... until they burst." — Unknown
40. "Returns matter a lot. It's our capital." — Abigail Johnson

On Saving & Wealth Building (The "Get Rich Slowly" Mindset)

41. "Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving." — Warren Buffett
42. "Rich people buy luxuries last. Poor people buy luxuries first." — Robert Kiyosaki
43. "It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep." — Robert Kiyosaki
44. "Wealth is the ability to fully experience life." — Henry David Thoreau
45. "Money is just a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver." — Ayn Rand
46. "The goal isn’t more money. The goal is living life on your terms." — Chris Brogan
47. "Financial freedom is available to those who learn about it and work for it." — Robert Kiyosaki
48. "A penny saved is a penny earned." — Benjamin Franklin
49. "Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like." — Will Rogers
50. "Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." — Warren Buffett

On Index Funds & Simplicity (The "Boglehead" Way)

51. "Owning the stock market over the long term is a winner's game, but attempting to beat the market is a loser's game." — John Bogle
52. "Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy." — John Bogle
53. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." — Jim Cramer (on Indexing)
54. "Investing is simple, but not easy." — Warren Buffett
55. "Complexity invites error." — Unknown
56. "There is no free lunch in investing, except diversification." — Harry Markowitz
57. "Don't look for the needle. Buy the haystack." — John Bogle
58. "The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go." — Benjamin Graham
59. "Simplicity is the master key to financial success." — John Bogle
60. "In many ways, the stock market is like the weather in that if you don't like the current conditions all you have to do is wait a while." — Lowell Miller

Short & Punchy One-Liners (For Social Media)

61. "Cash is trash." — Ray Dalio
62. "Buy low, sell high." — Traditional Wisdom
63. "Process over outcome." — Unknown
64. "Plan your trade and trade your plan." — Wall Street Maxim
65. "Don't fight the Fed." — Marty Zweig
66. "Trend is your friend." — Martin Zweig
67. "Buy when there's blood in the streets." — Baron Rothschild
68. "Dividends are the investor's best friend." — Josh Peters
69. "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value: zero." — Voltaire
70. "Information is not knowledge." — Albert Einstein
71. "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." — Niels Bohr
72. "Nobody knows anything." — Jack Bogle
73. "Fees matter." — John Bogle
74. "Speculation is not investing." — Benjamin Graham
75. "Leverage is a double-edged sword." — Unknown

Modern Wisdom (The New Guard)

76. "Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom." — Michael Saylor
77. "Software is eating the world." — Marc Andreessen
78. "The best investment you can make is in yourself." — Warren Buffett
79. "Ideally, you should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will." — Warren Buffett
80. "Volatility is the price of admission." — Morgan Housel
81. "If you want to be a millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline." — Richard Branson
82. "I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over." — Warren Buffett
83. "You make most of your money in a bear market, you just don't realize it at the time." — Shelby Cullom Davis
84. "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." — Benjamin Franklin
85. "Whatever method you use to pick stocks... your ultimate success or failure will depend on your ability to ignore the worries of the world long enough to allow your investments to succeed." — Peter Lynch

The Final 15: Deep Cuts

86. "The stock market is the only market where things go on sale and all the customers run out of the store." — Cullen Roche
87. "More money has been lost reaching for yield than at the point of a gun." — Raymond DeVoe Jr.
88. "Trading is a game of probabilities, not certainties." — Unknown
89. "If you can't control your emotions, you can't control your money." — Warren Buffett
90. "The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect." — Warren Buffett
91. "Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway." — Warren Buffett
92. "Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune." — Jim Rohn
93. "Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that." — Norman Vincent Peale
94. "Every time you buy a stock, someone else is selling it. One of you is wrong." — Unknown
95. "Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant." — P.T. Barnum
96. "Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it." — Will Rogers
97. "The hardest thing to judge is what you don't know." — Unknown
98. "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." — Mark Twain
99. "Invest for the long haul. Don’t get too greedy and don’t get too scared." — Shelby M.C. Davis
100. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." — Chinese Proverb