Words to the Wise

Wise Words
 

 

 

 

"We leave our mark on future generations by the children we bring into the world. How much of a greater legacy can anyone leave than that?"

-Harrison Butker

“Money is good, love is wealth.” 
– David Horton

"It isn't investments that get tested in turbulent markets. It is investors." - Jason Zweig 

Pay attention to the things that you are naturally drawn to.  They are often connected to your path, passion, and purpose in life.  Have the courage to follow them.

 

 - Ruben Chavez

“The US Economy is the humdrum name we give to the daily miracle of 151 million people getting out of bed in the morning to go to work. Astoundingly, a year after the nation dropped tools to lock down against the novel coronavirus, the sum total of this mass, diffused, constructive effort – the gross domestic product – has finally regained its $21 trillion per annum per-pandemic heights.”

– James Grant

“Everybody has some information. The function of the markets is to aggregate that information, evaluate it, and get it incorporated into prices.”

- Merton Miller2

“Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria.”

- Sir John Templeton

 

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

- Jeremiah 29:11-13                            

 

“There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don’t know where the market is headed and those who don’t know that they don’t know.”

- William Bernstein11

"Find opportunities in change, especially in today's world where change is moving at a fast pace, don't let change overwhelm you, let change help you find the opportunities you may have never seen."

- Catherine Pulsifier

“Everything in life, individually or socially, is a trade-off. We determine the risk levels we’re willing to tolerate.”

- Roberton Merton14

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”  

- F.M. Alexander

“I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong… In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.”

- Richard Feynman12

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago." 

- Warren Buffett

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

- Mark Twain

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.  He who understands it, earns it ... he who doesn't ... pays it.” 

- Albert Einstein

"As we head into 2018, we have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to expand our focus from traditional notions of financial inclusion to the broader goal of universal financial health. This means instead of just measuring how many people have a payment account, we must consider all of the financial services that people need to take control over their financial lives—everything from financial-planning tools for managing budgets and expenses to access to affordable credit to start businesses and invest in college; insurance to help deal with unexpected expenses; retirement accounts for long-term savings; and more." 

- President of PayPal, Dan Schulman

"Successful charitable fund-raising has much in common with managing a business: it requires leadership, persistence and creativity."

- David Rockefeller

“Most people might just as well buy a share of the whole market, which pools all the information, than delude themselves into thinking they know something the market doesn’t.”

- Merton Miller5

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

"When you invest, you are buying a day that you don't have to work."

- Aya Laraya

“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

“Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.”  - Warren Buffett 

   “I don’t predict the rain.  I help individuals build financial arks.” - Jim Rothenberg

    

"This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave." 

- Elmer Davis

“There is always a disposition in people’s minds to think the existing conditions will be permanent. When the market is down and dull, it is hard to make people believe that this is the prelude to a period of activity and advance. When the prices are up and the country is prosperous, it is always said that while preceding booms have not lasted, there are circumstances connected with this one, which make it unlike its predecessors and give assurance of permanency. The fact pertaining to all conditions is that they will change.” 

– Charles Dow, 1900

"The Social Security system is not intended as a substitute for private savings, pension plans, and insurance protection. It is rather intended as the foundation upon which these other forms of protection can be soundly built."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower 

"A budget is used to track expenses. It focuses on limiting them to stay within your means in order to save money.  It is a mindset of scarcity and is like using a rearview mirror for managing money. A budget is merely a piece of your puzzle. Cash flow is the picture. It focuses on where your money needs to go to fulfill the goals that you have for your future. It is like looking through a windshield to see where you are going and allows you to direct money toward creating health and ultimately more income. It is an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset."

- Brian Skrobonja

 "I believe our flag is more than just cloth and ink. It is a universally recognized symbol that stands for liberty, and freedom. It is the history of our nation, and it's marked by the blood of those who died defending it."

- John Thune 

The theory of self-determination holds that human beings need three basic things in order to be content: they need to feel competent at what they do; they need to feel authentic in their lives; and they need to feel connected to others.  These values are considered “intrinsic” to human happiness and far outweigh “extrinsic” values such as beauty, money and status.    

-  Sebastian Junger author of Tribe - On Homecoming and Belonging

   

"It's not what you take when you leave this world behind you. It's what you leave behind you when you go." 

- Randy Travis

 

"Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about." 

"From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35 she needs good looks. From 35 to 55 she needs a good personality. From 55 on she needs cash."

- Sophie Tucker

“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.”

- Sir William Bragg6

"The leaders who work most effectively never say "I". And That's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I". They don't think "I". They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done."

- Peter Drucker

“While higher interest rates, slower growth, and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses.” - Jerome Powell

"Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance." - Virgil

"The best way to predict your future is to create it."

- Abraham Lincoln

 

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

- John F. Kennedy

 

    

"Honor to the solider and sailor everywhere, who bravely bears his country's cause. Honor, also, to the citizen who cares for his brother in the field and serves, as he best can, the same cause."  

- Abraham Lincoln

    

  

"... the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."

- Theodore Roosevelt

   

 

"The person who is the star of previous era is often the last one to adapt to change, the last one to yield to logic of a strategic inflection point and tends to fall harder than most."

- Andrew Grove

 

"Try not to bet on the end of the world because it just doesn’t happen very often."

- Peter Lynch

I’m always struck by the similarity in women’s stories – whether athletes or scientists, businesswomen or soldiers, politicians – no matter how different they may superficially seem. That’s because of the thread of continuity with women throughout the ages, the sense that we are doing what women have always done, even as we pioneer our way across cultural divides or declare a revolution. 

Caretaking – that’s the common thread that runs through the stories. No matter what else women are doing, we are also “mothering” – taking care of somebody or something, and, for the most part doing it joyously. That’s what women have been doing from the beginning and I, believe, will continue to do. I think we’ve been doing it awfully well for a very long time. 

- Cokie Roberts, Author of We Are Our Mother's Daughters

 

“Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.”

- Warren Buffett9

"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half asleep even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."

- Mitch Albom

"Good organizations create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and then empower each other to relentlessy drive it to completion."

- Jack Welch 

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain. As far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

- Albert Einstein8

“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”

– Paul Samuelson7

"A vision is not a vision unless it says yes to some ideas and no to others, inspires people and is a reason to get out of bed in the morning and come to work."

- Gifford Pinchot

“The service we render to others is really the rent we pay for our room on this earth.”

- Wilfred Grenfell

"Always remember, the U.S. stock market is the greatest wealth engine ever created and it has everything to do with time and almost nothing to do with timing. It is time in the market, not timing the market that provides returns."

- Dave McGarel

“Money, like emotions, is something you must control to keep your life on the right track.”

 

- Natasha Munson

“We have both the staying power and firepower to thrive in this challenging environment, as we have for 36 years.”

Jon Gray, President and COO, Blackstone

"Interest rates are like gravity on valuations. If interest rates are nothing, values can be almost infinite. If interest rates are extremely high, that's a huge gravitational pull on values."

- Warren Buffett

"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

“The investor’s chief problem- and even his worst enemy- is likely to be himself.”

-Benjamin Graham

"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination, and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand." 
- Harry S. Truman
“‘Father’ is the noblest title a man can be given. It is more than a biological role. It signifies a patriarch, a leader, an exemplar, a confidant, a teacher, a hero, a friend.”
 
 
 
– Robert L. Backman 

"I don't think you ever stop giving. I think it is an on-going process. And it's not just about being able to write a check; It's being able to touch somebody's life."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Plans are nothing. Planning is everything." 

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To create a vision, people have to get beyond their current inhibitions — they have to dream."

- Jack Wells

“Bargain: something you can’t use at a price you cannot resist.”

- Franklin P. Jones

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

- Yogi Berri

"The important thing about an investment philosophy is that you have one you can stick with."

- David Booth1

"People who save 10 percent of their pay— and dont touch it— find themselves on pace to replace all their income in retirement." 

“Do you know what investing for the long run but listening to market news every day is like? It’s like a man walking up a big hill with a yo-yo and keeping his eyes fixed on the yo-yo instead of the hill.”

- Alan Abelson13

“Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, JR.

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve."

- Albert Schweitzer

“Pundits forecast not because they know, but because they are asked.”

- John Maynard Keynes3

“There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it.”

- Andrew Carnegie

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Howard Thurman

"For several years, you've had impressed upon you the importance of your career of dedication and hard work. That's true. But as important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be, you are a human being first and those human connections—with spouses, with children, with friends—are the most important investments you will ever make. Make an effort to learn about and respect difference, to be compassionate with one another, to cherish our own identity and to accept unconditionally the same in others. Consider making three very important choices: believe in something larger than yourself, find the joy in life. It's supposed to be fun! And cherish your human connections. At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent."

- First Lady, Barbara Bush, 1990

 

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  1. David Booth, “A veteran DFA exec tells what enduring RIA success is made of—and why the next-gen advisors will not disappoint,” RIA Biz (August 2013).

  2. Merton Miller, Investment Gurus (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
  3. John Kenneth Galbraith, Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail—and Why We Believe Them Anyway (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2010).
  4. Voltaire, Oxford Essential Quotations (Oxford University Press, 2012).
  5. Merton Miller, Investment Gurus (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
  6. Sir William Bragg, A Critique of Pure Physics: Concerning the Metaphors of New Physics (Thomas Neil Neubert, 2009), 19.
  7. Paul Samuelson, “Mutual Funds Report; Just Relax, Put Your Feet Up, and Make Money,” New York Times (April 2004).
  8. Albert Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity (London: Mathuen, 1922).
  9. Warren Buffett, Letter from Warren E. Buffett to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: Shareholder
  10. William Bernstein, The Intelligent Asset Allocator (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001).
  11. Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (New York: Perseus Publishing Company, 1999).
  12. Alan Abelson, Story Telling for Financial Advisors (Chicago: Dearborn Financial Publishing, 2000), 213.
  13. Robert Merton, “The Financial Innovator,” Business Times Weekend (August 2013), 10-11.