There no longer can be any doubt that the creation of the first index mutual fund was the most successful innovation - especially for investors - in modern financial history.

The rewards of my life have been great. I built a company; I left things better than I found them. I have a good reputation. I put the Vanguard shareholders and crew first. That's a huge thing.

The malfeasance and misjudgments by our corporate, financial and government leaders, declining ethical standards, and the failure of our new agency society reflect a failure of capitalism.

The driving force of any profession includes not only the special knowledge, skills and standards that it demands, but the duty to serve responsibly, selflessly and wisely, and to establish an inherently ethical relationship between professionals and society.

Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes.

I was never the type who had a particular ambition. I had friends in college who would say, 'I want to be a vice president by the time I'm 35 years old.' A lot of people had these career plans. I didn't have any. I thought if I did my best, good things would happen.

A fiduciary standard means, basically, put the interests of the client first. No excuses. Period.

While the interests of the business are served by the aphorism 'Don't just stand there. Do something!' the interests of investors are served by an approach that is its diametrical opposite: 'Don't do something. Just stand there!'

I've been studying mutual funds since 1949, when I began researching my senior thesis at Princeton University.

It is the power of words and books - explaining and dramatizing great ideas and articulating high ideals - that is the greatest weapon in the missionary's arsenal.

We do some things for family reasons. If it's not consistent, well, life isn't always consistent.

I would advise someone who has just retired to be something in the broad range of 50/50 stocks and bonds.

If we wanted something, we had to earn it.

Have rational expectations for future returns and avoid changing those expectations in response to the ephemeral noise coming from Wall Street.

Mutual funds with superior performance records often falter.

I liked the so-called Volcker Rule. I would have separated investment banking and commercial, deposit banking, as we did under the Glass-Steagal Act. I would have brought back Glass-Steagal.

If you were to just design the perfect retirement plan, you would own the stock market or you would own the bond market. You would get all the costs or all that you possibly could out of the system. So on an annual basis, if the market went up 8 percent, you would get 7.8 or 7.9 percent.

Vanguard never would have happened if I hadn't been fired as CEO of Wellington Management Company, the firm that did the investing for the Wellington fund and eight sister funds.

If the fluctuations in your investment portfolio are reduced, the impact of emotions and behavior on your account is also reduced.

Our financial system is driven by a giant marketing machine in which the interests of sellers directly conflict with the interests of buyers.

When our financial system - essentially our money managers, marketers of investment products and stockbrokers - put up zero percent of the capital and assume zero percent of the risk yet receive fully 80% of the return, something has gone terribly wrong in our financial system.

While we would typically encourage young people to start saving for the future as early as possible, it's unlikely that a budding entrepreneur will be able to do so. The entrepreneur will need every bit of capital available for the business, which will likely crowd out personal savings.

Nothing is simpler than owning the stock market and holding it forever, and that's essentially the idea behind the index fund.

Enjoy the magic of compounding returns. Even modest investments made in one's early 20s are likely to grow to staggering amounts over the course of an investment lifetime.