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.

There's no such thing as wealth without risk.

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 perfection in family life, and certainly we aren't perfect, but we're probably about as close as we can be.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Never underrate the importance of asset allocation.

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.'

Successful investing is all about common sense.

U.S. companies are innovative and entrepreneurial.

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