If the history books you're reading are fun and reassuring, you're not reading history, you're reading propaganda. The books you should pick up should open your world view. Should get you to see things that you didn't see before.
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. Yet the most dangerous habit is the habit of certainty — for it closes the very faculties by which excellence is sustained.
Will Durant — The Story of Philosophy
Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.
Warren Buffett — Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Letter
Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean. The problem is not just that everyone owns the same securities; it's that everyone has internalized the same reasons for owning them, and will therefore sell at the same time for the same reasons.
Howard Marks — The Most Important Thing