Top 118 Quotes & Sayings by Bernard Baruch - Page 2

Colleges don't teach economics properly. Unfortunately we learn little from the experience of the past. An economist must know, besides his subject, ethics, logic, philosophy, the humanities and sociology, in fact everything that is part of how we live and react to one another.

Don't try to be a jack of all investments. Stick to the field you know best.

Whatever men attempt, they seem driven to overdo. When hopes are soaring, I always repeat to myself that two and two still make four.

Learn to take losses quickly and cleanly. There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man's reasoning powers. Beware of barbers, beauticians, waiters - or anyone - bringing gifts of 'inside' information or tips. Don't try to be a jack of all investment. Stick to the field you know best.

Increased wages, higher pensions, more unemployment insurance, all are of no avail if the purchasing power of money falls faster.

Whatever you do, do it with all your heart and soul.

Never answer a critic, unless he's right.

Making a success of the job at hand is the best step toward the kind you want.

Even when we know what is right, too often we fail to act. More often we grab greedily for the day, letting tomorrow bring what it will, putting off the unpleasant and unpopular.

I am interested in physical medicine because my father was. I am interested in medical research because I believe in it. I am interested in arthritis because I have it.

A man sentenced to death obtained a reprieve by assuring the king he would teach his majesty's horse to fly within the year - on the condition that if he didn't succeed, he would be put to death at the end of the year. "Within a year," the man explained later, "the king may die, or I may die, or the horse may die. Furthermore, in a year, who knows? Maybe the horse will learn to fly." My philosophy is like that man's. I take the long-range view.

When the outlook is steeped in pessimism, I remind myself, "Two and two still make four, and you can't keep humankind down for long."

Bears don't live on Park Avenue.

Don't speculate unless you can make it a full time job.

Our problem in money-making or government affairs is how to remain properly venturesome and experimental without making fools of ourselves.

When beggars and shoeshine boys, barbers and beauticians can tell you how to get rich it is time to remind yourself that there is no more dangerous illusion than the belief that one can get something for nothing.

There are no such things as incurables. There are only things for which man has not found a cure.

I'll give you the bottom 10% and the top 10% of any move if I get to keep the middle 80%.

None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread. ... The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

Be quick to praise people. People like to praise those who praise them.

I was the son of an immigrant. I experienced bigotry, intolerance and prejudice, even as so many of you have. Instead of allowing these thing to embitter me, I took them as spurs to more strenuous effort. .

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.

Buy straw hats in the wintertime. Summer will surely come.

If you have made a mistake cut your losses as quickly as possible.

Only liars manage to always be out during bad times and in during good times.

Creativity: Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.

We are living in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is only his as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and his possessions at the call of the state.

Never play tips from "insiders." They can't see the forest for the trees.

I have learned the truth of the observation that the more one approaches great men the more one finds that they are men.

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth.

I get the facts, I study them patiently, I apply imagination.

A man can't retire his experience.

Gold has worked down from Alexander's time... When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory.

Government is not a substitute for people, but simply the instrument through which they act. And if the individual fails to do his duty as a citizen, government becomes a very deadly instrument indeed.

Become more humble as the market goes your way.

So efficient are the available instruments of slavery; fingerprints, lie detectors, brain washings, gas chambers; that we shiver at the thought of political change which might put these instruments in the hands of men of hate.

Agriculture is the greatest and fundamentally the most important of our industries. The cities are but the branches of the tree of national life, the roots of which go deeply into the land. We all flourish or decline with the farmer.

Society can progress if men's labors show a profit - if they yield more than is put in. To produce at a loss must leave less for all to share.

No man can humiliate me or disturb me. I won't let him.

Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit

You can't repeal human nature by an Act of Congress.

Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all... Knowing yourself and knowing the facts, you can judge whether you can change the situation so it is more to your liking. If you cannot--or if you do not know how to improve on things--then discipline yourself to the adjustments that will be necessary.

A dangerous fallacy is to repudiate freedom in favor of an unknown future. What else but our own sturdy reliance on freedom can explain the unexampled record this country has made? In a period scarcely twice my own lifetime it has risen from nothingness to become the world's greatest power. It has become the ark of the covenant of freedom.

Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu Norman of the Bank of England....At the time of the Banks action I warned of its consequences....I felt that sooner or later the market had to break.

The essence of any plan for financing old age is saving-to put aside some part of today's earnings for the future. Anything that saps the value of savings-and inflation is the worst single threat-is the enemy of the aged and of those who expect to grow old.

Financial storm definitely passed.

The longer I operated on Wall Street the more distrustful I became of tips and inside information of every kind. Given time, I believe that inside information can break the Bank of England

There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man's reasoning powers.

Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics.

America has never forgotten - and never will forget - the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path - the path that was entered upon only one hundred and fifty years ago ... How young she is! It will be centuries before she will adopt that maturity of custom - the clothing of the grave - that some people believe she is already fitted for.

We are here today to make a choice between the quick and the dead.

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they arent still there, hes no longer a political leader.

America has never forgotten - and never will forget - the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path...

Although the shooting war is over, we are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer.

The terror created by weaponry has never stopped men from employing them.

Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation... Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.