William P. Green > Quotes

“Who you spend your time with is probably the most important thing in life,”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Munger has also learned to control certain toxic emotions that would corrode his enjoyment of life. “Crazy anger. Crazy resentment. Avoid all that stuff,” he tells me. “I don’t let it run. I don’t let it start.” The same goes for envy, which he considers the dumbest of the seven deadly sins because it’s not even fun. He also disdains the tendency to view oneself as a victim, and he has no patience for whining. When I ask if he has a mental process that helps him to defuse self-defeating emotions, he replies, “I know that anger is stupid. I know that resentment is stupid. I know self-pity is stupid. So I don’t do them.… I’m trying not to be stupid every day, all day.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Inspired in part by Steinhardt, Nygren conducts a “devil’s advocate review” before buying any stock. One analyst on his team presents the bullish case. Another is tasked with “putting together the strongest bearish case.… By better understanding what we’re betting against, we’re more likely to make the right decision.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“There are four things that we know improve brain health and brain function,” says Shubin Stein. “Meditation, exercise, sleep, and nutrition.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“If you’re going to be in this game for the long pull, which is the way to do it, you better be able to handle a fifty percent decline without fussing too much about it. And so my lesson to all of you is, conduct your life so that you can handle the fifty percent decline with aplomb and grace. Don’t try to avoid it. It will come. In fact, I would say if it doesn’t come, you’re not being aggressive enough.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Devil’s advocate reviews. Premortems. Conversations with a skeptical discussion partner. A cognitive checklist that reminds us of our biggest biases and our past mistakes.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“You get a lot of A’s and B’s in school. In the stock market, you get a lot of F’s. And if you’re right six or seven times out of ten, you’re very good.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“I could lose all my money, and I could still go to these files and say, ‘Well, it’s not like I lived my life for nothing. Look at the people whose lives I’ve changed.’ ” Van Den Berg points to his trove of letters and says, “That’s my bank account.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Buffett charged no annual management fee but collected a performance fee of 25 percent of any profits over an annual “hurdle” of 6 percent. If he made a return of 6 percent or less, he didn’t get paid a dime.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“If all you succeed in doing in life is getting rich by buying little pieces of paper, it’s a failed life. Life is more than being shrewd in wealth accumulation. —Charlie Munger”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Once he felt “completely secure” about his financial future, no amount of money he could earn would make any difference to him. “I’m the richest guy in the world because I’m content with what I have,” says Van Den Berg. “I feel wealthier not because I have more money but because I’ve got health, good friendships, I’ve got a great family. Prosperity takes all of these things into consideration: health, wealth, happiness, peace of mind. That’s what a prosperous person is, not just a lot of money. That doesn’t mean anything.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what’s going on.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“A partner who is not subservient and who himself is extremely logical . . . is probably the best mechanism you can have.” Munger, the ideal foil, has shot down so many investment ideas that Buffett refers to him as “The Abominable No-Man.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Another common mistake that tilts the odds against many unsuspecting investors is to pay lavish fees to mediocre fund managers, stockbrokers, and financial advisers whose performance doesn’t justify the expense.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.”XI”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“The Art of Subtraction If there is one habit that all of the investors in this chapter have in common, it’s this: They focus almost exclusively on what they’re best at and what matters most to them. Their success derives from this fierce insistence on concentrating deeply in a relatively narrow area while disregarding countless distractions that could interfere with their pursuit of excellence. Jason Zweig, an old friend who is a personal finance columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the editor of a revised edition of The Intelligent Investor, once wrote to me, “Think of Munger and Miller and Buffett: guys who just won’t spend a minute of time or an iota of mental energy doing or thinking about anything that doesn’t make them better. . . . Their skill is self-honesty. They don’t lie to themselves about what they are and aren’t good at. Being honest with yourself like that has to be part of the secret. It’s so hard and so painful to do, but so important.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“how to prepare for the future instead of fooling ourselves into believing we can predict it.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Even in his eighties, he said, “I try to be more knowledgeable each year as an investor.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Munger describes himself as a collector of “absurdities,” “asininities,” and “inanities.” His daughter Molly recalls listening in her youth to his many cautionary tales “about people doing stupid things,” which often included “a tinge of ingratitude and poor moral judgment.” A typical story would feature the cosseted heir to a fortune who turned with bitter resentment against his father.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Asked about the crash of 1973–74, when his investment partnership lost more than 50 percent, he notes that Berkshire’s stock price has also halved on three occasions: “If you’re going to be in this game for the long pull, which is the way to do it, you better be able to handle a fifty percent decline without fussing too much about it. And so my lesson to all of you is, conduct your life so that you can handle the fifty percent decline with aplomb and grace. Don’t try to avoid it. It will come. In fact, I would say if it doesn’t come, you’re not being aggressive enough.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“As Buffett has said, “Business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior. But simple behavior is more effective.” Buffett”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“… You can dramatically extend life—not by multiplying the number of your years, but by expanding the fullness of your moments.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“As John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, which he dictated after going blind, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“When Sleep was about twenty, he fell under the spell of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. This memoir-as-tutorial, which had been rejected by 121 publishers, is a strange but brilliant meditation on what it means to lead a life dedicated to “Quality.” Pirsig exalts people who care so intensely about the quality of their actions and decisions that even the most mundane work becomes a spiritual exercise—a reflection of inner traits such as patience, integrity, rationality, and serenity. Whether you’re mending a chair, sewing a dress, or sharpening a kitchen knife, he writes that there is “an ugly way of doing it” and “a high-quality, beautiful way of doing it.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“How can I make smart decisions about the future if the future is unknowable?”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“He gave the students a series of “prescriptions for guaranteed misery in life,” recommending that they should be unreliable, avoid compromise, harbor resentments, seek revenge, indulge in envy, “ingest chemicals,” become addicted to alcohol, neglect to “learn vicariously from the good and bad experience of others,” cling defiantly to their existing beliefs, and “stay down” when struck by the “first, second, or third severe reverse in the battle of life.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“In a world where nothing is stable or dependable and almost anything can happen, the first rule of the road is to be honest with ourselves about our limitations and vulnerabilities”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

“Shinzen Young describes equanimity as a “detached, gentle matter-of-factness within which pleasure and pain are allowed to expand and contract without self-interference.” It’s not dissimilar to the way Marks views the markets, recognizing and accepting that “it is what it is” and, in that nonreactive state, having the clarity to respond logically and without emotion.”
― William P. Green, Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life