In investing, you get what you don't pay for. Costs matter. So intelligent investors will use low-cost index funds to build a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds, and they will stay the course. And they won't be foolish enough to think that they can consistently outsmart the market.

Working for company X and having a substantial portion of your retirement plan in company X is simply exposing yourself to too much risk, because the company is both your employer and the source of your retirement income. So if something goes wrong, you lose both your job and your retirement plan.

Invest as efficiently as you can, using low-cost funds that can be bought and held for a lifetime.

We have moved from treating funds as investment trusts designed to serve their owner-beneficiaries to treating funds as consumer products, designed to attract the largest possible assets. This new approach has ill-served the interests of fund shareholders.

Glen Weyl is a good friend of mine.

I tend to give to those who have helped me along the road of life: Blair Academy, Princeton University, our church, and several hospitals that got me here in one piece. On the community side, I've always been a big supporter of the United Way.

I like Burton Malkiel's 'A Random Walk Down Wall Street.' He comes to the same conclusion that I do - that indexing is the way. My 'Little Book of Common Sense Investing' says pretty much the same thing.

Wise investors won't try to outsmart the market.

Eliminate emotion from your investment program.

The reality of life is, if you have a bagel shop and everybody is pouring into the doughnut shop across the street, if you want to stay in business, you start selling doughnuts.

The basic idea of retirement income is, to me, to get a check, two checks every month, one from your fixed income and one from equity account. And you want them to grow over time.

We make too much out of past performance, and it's very misleading to investors. It causes them to move money around. They buy a fund that's hot and then it turns cold as all hot funds eventually do. And then they get out. Well, buying at the high and selling at the low isn't going to leave you a satisfied shareholder, right?

The stock market is a giant distraction from the business of investing.

The index fund always gives you the market return.

Diversification has been, and balance, like Wellington, has been so drummed into me, it's part of my personality.

U.S. companies are innovative and entrepreneurial.

Successful investing is all about common sense.

At the beginning of my sophomore year at Princeton University, I took my first economics course; our textbook was the first edition of Samuelson's 'Economics: An Introductory Analysis.'

Never underrate the importance of asset allocation.

I think high turnover is definitively the investor's enemy, so you don't want to bring a high-turnover philosophy to this business. You want to have a long-term philosophy.

In my long experience, one thing I know is that truth is elusive.

The average hedge fund manager is going to earn zero per cent in extra return.

I spend about half of my time wondering why I have so much in stocks and about half wondering why I have so little.

My incentive in starting Vanguard, I'm very blunt about this, it was my means of preserving my career. That's a very selfish thing.

Investing is a virtuous habit best started as early as possible.

I built a career out of knowing what I don't know.

There is no country like the United States, with its diversified industrial base, technology leadership, innovation and strong pressure to build companies to make them grow.

My favourite holdings are Vanguard's Wellington Fund, a balanced mutual fund which is a legacy investment from my first career at Wellington Management Co., and the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

It seems to me - particularly for these retirement-plan investors, the vast majority of whom are not particularly financially sophisticated - by far the best way is to invest in index funds.

When you're young, you've got plenty of time to recover from your mistakes.

If the job of capitalism is to create wealth for those who put up the capital, no fund group comes close to Vanguard's success in serving its owners. So we're probably as far away from communism as is realistically possible.

I've usually used the phrase 'stay the course' as one of the great rules of investment success.

What we need is congressional action to establish a federal principle of fiduciary duty - encapsulated by the phrase 'no man can serve two masters.'

We must work to establish a 'fiduciary society,' where manager/agents entrusted with managing other people's money are required - by federal statute - to place front and center the interests of the owners they are duty-bound to serve.

There's no perfection in family life, and certainly we aren't perfect, but we're probably about as close as we can be.

Entrepreneurs or international conglomerateurs, or large financial institutions buy or create mutual fund management companies to create a return on their own capital. It's capitalism at work, where the rewards tend to go to the managers rather than the investors.

There's no such thing as wealth without risk.

With actively managed funds, people have big behavior problems. With funds that have done well, they put their money in, and when it has done bad, they want to take it out.

I don't like going into stores, I don't like the whole process of buying things.

I would always advise young people to follow their star - not my star. They have to live their own life. If they decide they want to go into the investment business, do it, but make it a better business than it is today.

Central to the effective functioning of early capitalism was the fundamental principle of trusting and being trusted.

I learned you work for what you get, and I feel sorry for people who haven't had that upbringing.

I almost hate to say how proud I am of my career and, most of all, helping folks get the returns they deserve.

The long-term focus of index funds is a much needed counterweight to the short-termism favored by so many market participants.

They were tough times and I started working when I was 10 years old, delivering papers and eventually becoming a waiter.

There is almost no limit to the ability of investors to ignore the lessons of the past.

Regardless of what happens in the markets, stick to your investment program. Changing your strategy at the wrong time can be the single most devastating mistake you can make as an investor.

I seek the truth.

I'm not sure I really am an entrepreneur. I'm not much of a businessman. I know I'm not a marketing guy. I do have an entrepreneurial lineage, though.

I don't see any magic in hedge funds.