Businessman

U.S. companies are innovative and entrepreneurial.

Well, I like regulation as little as anybody else. It can be intrusive. It can be detailed. It can be bureaucratic. It can be unevenly administered. It can be unfair. But most regulations that we have for mutual funds and for banks are regulations that we earned. We did something wrong and we're paying a price for it.

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.

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.

My only regret about money is that I don't have more to give away.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Glen Weyl is a good friend of mine.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I think average investors should not trade a lot. The evidence is overpowering. The more you trade, the less you earn.

Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. It is a high-risk, high-reward proposition.

In an ideal world, Adam Smith-like, individuals would recognize what they need to do in their own self-interest, and they will make changes happen and look after themselves.

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.