“When people are frightened, they cut their time horizon dramatically, … Even advisors will say to sell because they see portfolios crumble and they fear people will have nothing left. It’s really not rational, but it does happen.” (David Dreman)

“The existence of bear markets gives stocks their superior rates of return. If there were no down markets, there would be no risk; and if there were no risk, there would be no risk premium -the extra return that stocks earn over other safe assets, such as gov’t bonds and certificates of deposit. In fact, it’s because of the extraordinarily high returns stockholders receive at the tail end of the bear market that stocks beat all other financial assets hands down.” (Jeremy Siegel)

“The problem is that real risk and perceived risk are two different things. And that’s where people get into trouble, because they perceive risk to be high when prices are low, and they perceive risk to be low when prices are high. That’s the psychological problem that most people have.” (Bill Miller)

“I don’t follow people. I don’t follow the crowd. I don’t follow rumors. I follow the truth. And the only truth is value.” (Ed Pratolo)

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.” (Oscar Wilde)

“If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.” (Warren Buffet)

“If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.” (Buffet)

“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” (Buffet)

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” (Buffet)

“The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” (Buffet)

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” (Buffet)

“Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.” (Buffet)

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” (Buffet)

 ”What we always tell investors is beware of too much leverage in a company,” says Brian Rogers, chairman and portfolio manager for T. Rowe Price. “Leverage is the enemy of the investor.”

“These firms closed their eyes and made very bad bets on risky securities that they didn’t truly understand,” says Jeremy Siegel, finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school. “Investments that they did not have to make led to their demise.”

Prof. Robert Shiller:”We’re dealing with fundamental and profound uncertainties,” he says. “We can’t quantify anything. I really don’t want to make predictions, so this is nothing but an intuition.” But Prof. Shiller is hardly a crank. In his book “Irrational Exuberance,” published at the very crest of the Internet bubble in early 2000, he forecast the crash of Nasdaq. The second edition of the book, in 2005, insisted (at a time when few other pundits took such a view) that residential real estate was wildly overvalued.

“In terms of stress, I don’t think I’ve felt anything like this before. But I didn’t sell any stocks. I’ve been nibbling at financials, actually. I think the big banks that survive this will come out much stronger.” (Jeremy Siegel, finance professor  Wharton School)

“Wall Street is always going to go where the money is and not worry about the consequences. First they invent things they shouldn’t sell to anybody, then they end up selling them to their grandmothers.” (Charlie Munger, vice chairman Berkshire Hathaway)

“It comes about from having an investment philosophy grounded in the idea that a stock is a piece of a business. If you look at it that way, there’s no reason to get excited whether some analyst is recommending it or the company is splitting the shares two-for-one, or whatever. The only way to drive the extraneous thoughts out of your mind is to have a philosophy. (Warren Buffet)

“You have to have the right temperament. I tell the students who come visit me that if you have more than 120 or 130 I.Q. points, you can afford to give the rest away. You don’t need extraordinary intelligence to succeed as an investor. You need a philosophy and the ability to think independently…It doesn’t make any difference what other people think of a stock. What matters is whether you know enough to evaluate the business.” (Warren Buffet)

“Someday,” says legendary contrarian investor David Dreman, “we’re going to look back and ask ourselves why we weren’t more aggressive in picking up bargains in this market.”