There’s a lot to ponder with some of the best investment quotes below. They come from some of the world’s best investors and by learning from them, you can stand out from the crowd.

When setting out on any path, there’s no need to start without a map. Others have come before you and there’s a lot we can learn from them. Great thinkers – and doers – have packed lifetimes of wisdom into the words below.

To make it easier to digest, I’ve organized the quotes into groups. You’ll notice some of the logic overlaps, but that should help reinforce the underlying lessons. Without further ado, let’s dive in…

Investment Quotes on Time

1. You don’t need perfect timing to achieve marvelous returns. Time in the market beats timing the market – almost always.
-Ken Fisher

2. 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

3. If you want to succeed in investments, start early and try hard and keep doing it. All success comes that way, by and large.
-Charlie Munger

4. You can lose money very fast, in two months, but you very rarely make money very fast in the stock market. When I look back, my great stocks took a long time to work out.
-Peter Lynch

5. Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.
-Albert Einstein

6. The time component of compounding is why 99% of Warren Buffett’s net worth came after his 50th birthday, and 97% came after he turned 65.
-Morgan Housel

7. If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes.
-Warren Buffett

8. In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.
-Benjamin Graham

9. With a good perspective on history, we can have a better understanding of the past and present, and thus a clear vision of the future.
-Carlos Slim Helú

10. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
-Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett easily makes this list of the best investment quotes. You’ll see a few more below and here’s a larger list of Warren Buffett quotes.

Investment Quotes on Risk

11. You know, we think diversification is – as practiced generally – makes very little sense for anyone that knows what they’re doing… it is a protection against ignorance.
-Warren Buffett

12. Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack.
-John Bogle

13. The four most dangerous words in investing are, it’s different this time.
-Sir John Templeton

14. I don’t think the objective of investment should ever be to take a risk in order to get a return. I think the objective of shrewd investment should be to find opportunities which offer a larger return than the average, combined with adequate safety.
-Benjamin Graham

15. The biggest risk of all is not taking one.
-Mellody Hobson

16. Not even the “safest” investment is without some risk and some element of speculation.
-Bernard Baruch

17. We try to protect against tail risk: the risk of unlikely but possible events that could be catastrophic.
-Seth Klarman

18. After a stock market decline, people may perceive more risk than before when, in fact, the decline may have taken some of the risk out of the market.
-Robert Shiller

19. Minimizing downside risk while maximizing the upside is a powerful concept.
-Mohnish Pabrai

20. Given a 10% chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time.
-Jeff Bezos

Investment Quotes on Psychology

21. I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
-Warren Buffett

22. The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
-Benjamin Graham

23. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.
-Warren Buffett

24. The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.
-Nathan Rothschild

25. When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?
-John Maynard Keynes

26. An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
-Benjamin Franklin

27.  Although it’s easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket… it’s part ownership of a business.
-Peter Lynch

28. Gambling is a tax on ignorance. People often gamble because they think they can win, they’re lucky, they have hunches, that sort of thing, whereas in fact, they’re going to be remorselessly ground down over time.
-Edward O. Thorp

29. It is impossible to produce superior performance unless you do something different from the majority.
-John Templeton

30. It is remarkable how much long term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.
-Charlie Munger

31. The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
-Robert J. Shiller

32. The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.
-Warren Buffett

33. The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different.
-Sir John Templeton

34. The person who starts simply with the idea of getting rich won’t succeed; you must have a larger ambition.
-John D. Rockefeller

35. This company looks cheap, that company looks cheap, but the overall economy could completely screw it up. The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.
-David Tepper

36. Nearly every time I strayed from the herd, I’ve made a lot of money. Wandering away from the action is the way to find the new action.
-Jim Rogers

Final Thoughts

You can learn a great deal by thinking about these investment quotes. They’re all short sayings but are packed with wisdom. And there are many overlapping lessons.

No matter what paths you take in life, these ideas can help. They’re cross disciplinary and when it comes to building wealth, they’re vital.

To learn more about investing, continue exploring Investment U. There are many investment opportunities to consider today…