Top 50 John C. Bogle Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.”

— John C. Bogle

Featured in: Time Quotes, Financial Success Quotes

2. “The stock market is a giant distraction to the business of investing.”

— John C. Bogle

Featured in: Investing Quotes

3. “Learn every day, but especially from the experiences of others. It’s cheaper!”

— John C. Bogle

4. “Don’t look for the needle in the haystack. Just buy the haystack!”

— John C. Bogle

5. “Reversion to the mean is the iron rule of the financial markets.”

— John C. Bogle

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

— John C. Bogle

7. “If you have trouble imagining a 20% loss in the stock market, you shouldn’t be in stocks.”

— John C. Bogle

8. “The miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs.”

— John C. Bogle

9. “Speculation leads you the wrong way. It allows you to put your emotions first, whereas investment gets emotions out of the picture.”

— John C. Bogle

10. “Your success in investing will depend in part on your character and guts, and in part on your ability to realize at the height of ebullience and the depth of despair alike that this too shall pass.”

— John C. Bogle

11. “You know the rule of 72, divide the number into 72, any number you want, and that’s how long it will take your money to double.”

— John C. Bogle

12. “Index funds eliminate the risks of individual stocks, market sectors, and manager selection. Only stock market risk remains.”

— John C. Bogle

13. “The mistakes we make as investors is when the market’s going up, we think it’s going to go up forever. When the market goes down, we think it’s going to go down forever. Neither of those things actually happen. Doesn’t do anything forever. It’s by the moment.”

— John C. Bogle

14. “Surprise! The returns reported by mutual funds aren’t actually earned by mutual fund investors.”

— John C. Bogle

15. “The historical data support one conclusion with unusual force: To invest with success, you must be a long-term investor.”

— John C. Bogle

16. “The courage to press on regardless – regardless of whether we face calm seas or rough seas, and especially when the market storms howl around us – is the quintessential attribute of the successful investor.”

— John C. Bogle

17. “If the data do not prove that indexing wins, well, the data are wrong.”

— John C. Bogle

18. “Owning the stock market over the long term is a winner’s game, but attempting to beat the market is a loser’s game.”

— John C. Bogle

19. “Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.”

— John C. Bogle

20. “The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don’t get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don’t pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.”

— John C. Bogle

21. “If your fund doesn’t last for the long term, how can you invest for the long term?”

— John C. Bogle

22. “The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.” Stick to the good plan. Traditional.”

— John C. Bogle

23. “When there are multiple solutions to a problem, choose the simplest one.”

— John C. Bogle

24. “It’s amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if he’s paid a small fortune not to understand it.”

— John C. Bogle

25. “Hint: money flows into most funds after good performance, and goes out when bad performance follows.”

— John C. Bogle

26. “It’s 1450 out of 1500 ETF funds that I just wouldn’t touch because they’re not diversified enough. Or they have some huge speculative twist to them that if you can guess the markets right you will do very well for a day or two but who can do that? Nobody.”

— John C. Bogle

27. “Successful investing is about owning businesses and reaping the huge rewards provided by the dividends and earnings growth of our nation’s – and, for that matter, the world’s – corporations.”

— John C. Bogle

28. “Managed funds are astonishingly tax-inefficient.”

— John C. Bogle

29. “The mutual fund industry has been built, in a sense, on witchcraft.”

— John C. Bogle

30. “The principal role of the mutual fund is to serve its investors.”

— John C. Bogle

31. “My biggest prediction for the future is that people are going to start looking after individual investors.”

— John C. Bogle

32. “I will create value for society, rather than extract it.”

— John C. Bogle

33. “Gunning for average is your best shot at finishing above average.”

— John C. Bogle

34. “The two greatest enemies of the equity fund investor are expenses and emotions.”

— John C. Bogle

35. “In the long run, investing is not about markets at all. Investing is about enjoying the returns earned by businesses.”

— John C. Bogle

36. “Fund investors are confident that they can easily select superior fund managers. They are wrong.”

— John C. Bogle

37. “We need a mutual fund industry with both vision and values; a vision of fiduciary duty and shareholder service, and values rooted in the proven principles of long-term investing and of trusteeship that demands integrity in serving our clients.”

— John C. Bogle

38. “Investors need to understand not only the magic of compounding long-term returns, but the tyranny of compounding costs; costs that ultimately overwhelm that magic.”

— John C. Bogle

39. “The winning formula for success in investing is owning the entire stock market through an index fund, and then doing nothing. Just stay the course.”

— John C. Bogle

40. “On balance, the financial system subracts value from society.”

— John C. Bogle

41. “The transfer of Wall Street from private ownership to public ownership has been a big step backward.”

— John C. Bogle

42. “I think it’s gone much too far. Most of them are not worth the powder to blow them to hell.”

— John C. Bogle

43. “Income earned by the sweat of your brow should be taxed at the lowest rates, not the highest. Capital gains should be taxed at a higher rate.”

— John C. Bogle

44. “In Las Vegas we all know that it’s the croupiers who win. At the race track, it’s those who control the handle who win. State lotteries, does anybody think the participants in the lottery win? No. The state wins.”

— John C. Bogle

45. “The idea that a bell rings to signal when investors should get into or out of the market is simply not credible. After nearly 50 years in this business, I do not know of anybody who has done it successfully and consistently. I don’t even know anybody who knows anybody who has done it successfully and consistently.”

— John C. Bogle

46. “Buying funds based purely on their past performance is one of the stupidest things an investor can do.”

— John C. Bogle

47. “The multiple failings of our flawed financial sector are jeopardizing, not only the retirement security of our nation’s savers but the economy in which our entire society participates.”

— John C. Bogle

48. “It will also tell you how easy it is to do just that: simply buy the entire stock market. Then, once you have bought your stocks, get out of the casino and stay out. Just hold the market portfolio forever. And that’s what the index fund does. This investment philosophy is not only simple and elegant. The arithmetic on which it is based is irrefutable. But it is not easy to follow its discipline. So.”

— John C. Bogle

49. “Pressed to identify useful financial innovations created during the past quarter-century, Paul A. Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chairman and recent chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Board, could single out only one: “The ATM.”

— John C. Bogle

50. “Financial markets are far too complex to isolate any single variable with ease, as if conducting a scientific experiment. The record is utterly bereft of evidence that definitive predictions of short-term fluctuations in stock prices can be made with consistent accuracy. The prices of common stocks are evanescent and illusory.”

— John C. Bogle