Quotes on Mistakes

I have made bad business decisions. You can’t live a successful life without doing some difficult things that go wrong. That’s just the nature of the game.

The single most important thing, if you want to avoid a lot of stupid errors, is knowing where you’re competent and where you aren’t. Knowing the edge of your own competency. And that’s very hard to do because the human mind naturally tries to make you think you’re way smarter than you are.

I'm constantly making mistakes where I can, in retrospect, realize that I should have decided differently. And I think that that is inevitable because it's difficult to be a good investor.

It may be a fair generalization to assert that the top levels of most "normal" bull markets are characterized by a tendency to equate stock risks with bond risks.

The more irreversible the decisions, the more expensive the consequences of being wrong.

To me, the primary task in investing is to test and then retest some more the parameters and paradigms that appear to govern daily events. Betting against them is dangerous when they look solid, but accepting them without question is the most dangerous step of all.

Laws have been passed to outlaw some of the more egregious behavior which contributed to the big bull market of the twenties. Nothing has been done about the seminal lunacy which possesses people who see a chance of becoming rich.

I do strongly urge that we be as cautious as ever in reposing too great confidence in men of great financial position.

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

More investment sins are probably committed by otherwise quite intelligent people because of "tax considerations" than from any other cause.

I'm an optimist, both as a person and an investor. It's a big mistake to be pessimistic as long as we have a viable civilization which is reasonably well managed.

My stocks sometimes get overpriced, but in the long run this kind of company, if you can find it, will outperform the market and the economy. The worst thing you can do is try to catch the swings, sell out too soon and be afraid to buy back in.

I really believe it's better to learn from other people's mistakes as much as possible.

One of my life principles is that the only way you can live life is by dealing with what is, and not with what might have been. So that's the way I've tried to deal with setbacks.

It is true that you don't go broke taking a profit, but that assumes you will make a profit on everything you do. It doesn't allow for the mistakes you're bound to make in the investment business.

Being extremely early is tantamount to being wrong, so contrarians are well advised to develop an understanding of the psychology of the sellers.

Investors must never mistake an investment that is down in price for one that is bargain-priced; undervaluation is determined only by a security's price compared to its underlying value.

Being very early and being wrong look exactly the same 99% of the time.

Just because we think a stock is undervalued doesn't mean we're right. We may be wrong in our judgment.

One of the things you learn in this business is humility because you see your mistakes the next day.

You have to say to yourself, "If I'm right, how much am I going to make? If I'm wrong, how much am I going to lose?" That's the risk/reward ratio.

A lot of my stocks don't work. The beauty of the stock market is that if you are wrong, if you put $1,000 up, all you lose is $1,000. I have proven that many times.

In this business, if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten.

The times I have been most wrong are the times I thought I was most right.

The most important lesson an investor can learn is to be dispassionate when confronted by unexpected and unfavorable outcomes.

Being wrong on occasion is inescapable.

If you're lucky enough to have one golden egg in your portfolio, it may not matter if you have a couple of rotten ones in there with it.

If a stock has gone sideways for a couple of years, and the fundamentals are decent, and you can find something new that's positive in the company, then if you're wrong, the stock will probably continue to go sideways, and you won't lose a lot of money. But if you're right, that stock is going north.

One of the oldest sayings on Wall Street is "Let your winners run, and cut your losers." It's easy to make a mistake and do the opposite, pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds.

Tip one: Don't buy stocks on tips alone.

There's a psychological benefit to tossing the bums out: The names disappear from the monthly brokerage statements; we're no longer reminded of our mistakes.

Avoid long shots. I've bought about 30 long shots in my life. I've never broken even on one.

I've thought a lot of things when I'm managing money with great, great conviction, and a lot of times I'm wrong. And when you're betting the ranch and the circumstances change, you have to change, and that's how I've always managed money.

Diversification is a safety factor that is essential because we should be humble enough to admit we can be wrong.

Through reluctance to sell, more than one investor has avoided the capital gains tax but lost the capital gain itself.

I have this motto in life as well as in business, which is: every day, I'm lucky if I have learned something new and I'm doubly lucky if it hadn't cost too much.

I think it's part of a life lived right that you learn how to make some lemonade out of your lemons.

No method guarantees you're not going to lose your shirt. I've done that many times. I've had stocks go from $11 to seven cents.

The chief hazard of a careful common stock program is not that it may bring unexpected losses, but that its profits will turn the investor into a speculator greedy for quicker and bigger gains -- and therefore headed for ultimate disaster.

Investors venerate their old gods long after their divinity is departed.

They used to say about the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and they learned nothing, and I'll say about the Wall Street people, typically, is that they learn nothing, and they forget everything.

Probably the largest aggregate losses are suffered by people who invest overenthusiastically in a basically sound company.

I have lost a lot of money in some bad savings and loans. I have lost money in bad banks. And I have lost money in electronics companies. It is very easy to lose money in the stock market.

Every great money manager I've ever met, all they want to talk about is their mistakes. There's a great humility there.

Many mistakes have been made in buying growth stocks on the theory that the future will duplicate the past.

Modern life creates successful bureaucracy and successful bureaucracy breeds failure and stupidity.

My system in life is to figure out what's really stupid and then avoid it. It doesn't make me popular, but it prevents a lot of trouble.

The mistake most people make is answering the door just because Mr. Market knocks. You don't have to let him in.

Most of the destruction of investment value occurs in small, private anguishing experiences that are never discussed and never recorded, because people were doing things they never should have done.

It is a great mistake to refine the analysis of a single year's showing to the last possible penny, in order to build from that some substantial idea of the value of the stock; because it cannot be found in the results for any given year no matter how accurately those results were stated.

You're going to make mistakes. If you're terrific in this business you're right six times out of 10.