Most people think that if they just had more information, they'd make better decisions. But the problem is rarely a lack of information — it's that we don't want to believe what the information is telling us.

The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation that isn't merely stated but is structurally enforced — meaning your capital, your clients, and your own psychology are all aligned so that you literally cannot sell at the wrong time.

The risk of paying too high a price for good-quality stocks is not the chief hazard for the thoughtful, enterprising investor — his chief hazard is the adoption of unsound principles or inapplicable methods under conditions of excitement and stress.

The lesson of history is that there have always been more buyers of stability than sellers of it. When uncertainty rises, the price of certainty rises with it — and those willing to sell certainty at that moment earn returns that compound for decades.

The biggest moat a business can have is not technology, not patents, not brand — it's the accumulated trust of customers who would feel genuine loss if you disappeared. Trust is the only asset that appreciates purely through use and deteriorates purely through neglect.

Most people think of risk as the probability of losing money. But the real risk is behaving in a way today that prevents you from being in the game tomorrow. Permanent impairment of capital is far less common than permanent impairment of judgment under pressure.

The stock promoter sells sizzle, but the great investor buys the business nobody is talking about yet. Most of the time the exciting story and the good investment are mutually exclusive — the more compelling the narrative, the more the price has already discounted the future.

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. Most people don't recognize the institutional imperative at work — the tendency of organizations to mindlessly imitate whatever peers are doing, regardless of whether it makes sense.

The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for it — and a mediocre company can be a fine investment if you buy it cheaply enough.

The greatest competitive advantage in business is a long time horizon. Almost all of the gains in any market come from people willing to wait longer than everyone else is willing to wait, and almost nobody is structurally set up to do that.

Risk means more things can happen than will happen. The dangerous investor is not the one who doesn't know what will happen, but the one who doesn't know what he doesn't know.

The market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. But what most people miss is that patience isn't passive — it requires the active courage to hold while everything around you screams sell.

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean. Unconventional behavior is the only road to superior investment results, but it isn't for everyone. Uncomfortably idiosyncratic positions can result in short-term performance that is worse than the market or peers.

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. The long-term compounder who does nothing dramatic usually beats the person executing a brilliant short-term strategy.

The best business is one where you can raise prices without losing customers. The second-best business is one where you can raise prices and gain customers.

The best investment is in the business that compounds the fastest while requiring the least capital. Most people think about return on capital. They should think about return on capital per unit of risk taken.

The difference between a good business and a great business is that a good business earns a fair return on capital employed, but a great business earns exceptional returns on capital while reinvesting at those same exceptional rates.

The best chance of success is to buy something that is so good that even a fool can run it. Because sooner or later, a fool will.

The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting. Patience is the virtue that is most rewarded in investing.

The best time to buy is when there's blood in the streets. The second best time is when everyone else is buying.

The best business to be in is one where you can raise prices without losing customers, and yet few businesses qualify. Most businesses are competitive enough that if they raise prices, they lose significant volume.

The biggest investing errors come not from companies that fail, but from companies that succeed in ways you didn't anticipate. You prepare for the future by studying how the past was different from what people expected.

The best way to get smart is to try to be a little smarter than you were the day before. And the way to do that is to recognize how much you don't know.

The best thing you can do is compound money at high rates of return for a long time. That's the game. Most people don't understand that the biggest returns come from sitting, not trading.

The best investment is in the business that compounds the fastest while requiring the least capital to do so. Most people focus on the numerator and ignore the denominator.

The best way to get smart is to try to be a little smarter than you were the day before—and to do that, you have to know what you don't know.

The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating the past, but by understanding what's actually changing and what isn't.

The best way to get smart is to try to be a little smarter than you were the day before. But the way to get rich is to try to be a little richer than you were the day before.

The best way to think about the future is not by extrapolating the past, but by understanding incentive structures and what they reward. Most people get this backwards.

The difference between a great business and a mediocre one is often that the great business keeps compounding capital at high rates of return for decades, while the mediocre business cannot. Most people underestimate how powerful this difference becomes over time.

The best investment is in the business that compounds the fastest while requiring the least reinvestment. Most people focus on the first part and ignore the second, which is why they end up with businesses that eat cash.

The investing world is full of 'smart' people. But intelligence is not the limiting factor. The limiting factor is temperament. You need the temperament to be able to think and act independently.

The great thing about the public markets is that they give you a daily opportunity to think about what your business is worth. The terrible thing about it is that you can act on it.

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth. You must study where the world is heading, not where it has been. Most people are heavily invested in the past.

The difference between a good business and a bad business is that a good business throws off cash and requires little capital to grow, while a bad business requires lots of capital and doesn't throw off much cash.

The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting. You have to be willing to let your profits run and cut your losses short.

The best investment is in yourself. But once you've bought yourself, you need to think about what produces the best return on that investment. And the answer is usually a business where you have some advantage—whether it's a better mousetrap, or better access, or better understanding of the customer.

The best decisions come from understanding what you don't know. Most people spend their time trying to be right about what they think they know, when they should be figuring out what they're wrong about.

The difference between a competent person and an incompetent one is often that the competent person has learned how to recognize and avoid the standard modes of self-deception.

The difference between a wise decision and a foolish one is often not apparent until years later. What matters is the quality of your thinking at the time, not whether you got lucky.

The best thing a company can do is compound capital efficiently over a long period of time. Everything else is details.

The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting. You have to be willing to hold. Most people aren't.