Top 197 Quotes & Sayings by Benjamin Graham

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.

The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.

In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: 'This too will pass.'

In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.

Investing isn't about beating others at their game. It's about controlling yourself at your own game.

Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.

By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimize the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.

Stock speculation is largely a matter of A trying to decide what B, C and D are likely to think-with B, C and D trying to do the same.

Losing some money is an inevitable part of investing, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. But to be an intelligent investor, you must take responsibility for ensuring that you never lose most or all of your money.

By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people's mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.

Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.

To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a true margin of safety is one that can be demonstrated by figures, by persuasive reasoning, and by reference to a body of actual experience.

It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.

No matter how careful you are, the one risk no investor can ever eliminate is the risk of being wrong. Only by insisting on what Graham called the "margin of safety" - never overpaying, no matter how exciting an investment seems to be - can you minimize your odds of error.

Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.

Speculators often prosper through ignorance; it is a cliché that in a roaring bull market knowledge is superfluous and experience is a handicap. But the typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss

The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.

Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

Mr. Market's job is to provide you with prices; your job is to decide whether it is to your advantage to act on them. You no not have to trade with hime just because he constantly begs you to.

To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.

The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator's primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. Market movements are important to him in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high price levels at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell.

Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.

It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.

All the real money in investment will have to be made as most of it has been in the past not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.

The true investor... will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operation results of his companies.

Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.

Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.

Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.

The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.

In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

A defensive investor can always prosper by looking patiently and calmly through the wreckage of a bear market.

we have complaints that institutional dominance of the stock market has put 'the small investor at a disadvantage because he can't compete with the trust companies' huge resources, etc. The facts are quite the opposite. It may be that the institutions are better equipped than the individual to speculate in the market.But I am convinced that an individual investor with sound principles, and soundly advised, can do distinctly better over the long pull than large institutions.

Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.

The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.

Evidently stockholders have forgotten more than to look at balance sheets. They have forgotten also that they are owners of a business and not merely owners of a quotation on the stock ticker. It is time, and high time, that the millions of American shareholders turned their eyes from the daily market reports long enough to give some attention to the enterprises themselves of which they are the proprietors, and which exist for their benefit and at their pleasure.

A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular - but when something goes wrong.

The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.

It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.

The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.

At heart, "uncertainty" and "investing" are synonyms.

The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character

If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.

No statement is more true and better applicable to Wall Street than the famous warning of Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.

The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.