Benjamin Graham Quotes

151 Sourced Quotes

Whether we like it or not, government intervention in the face of surplus is here to stay.

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

Benjamin Graham
It is a misfortune of the times that all of us must needs be amateur economists-including, and perhaps especially, the professionals.

Benjamin Graham
Both a priori reasoning and experience teach us that as as these funds grow larger the geometrical rate of growth by compound interest ultimately defeats itself.

Benjamin Graham
Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.

Benjamin Graham
The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.

Benjamin Graham
While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

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

Benjamin Graham
Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever; when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult.

Benjamin Graham
Why should the cotton growers suffer if there is shortage of wheat?

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

Benjamin Graham
I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history's repeating itself on many different counts. You don't get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of prices is not too high.

Benjamin Graham
Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.

Benjamin Graham
A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.

Benjamin Graham
Instead of passing blithely over into that Promised Land, flowing almost literally with milk and honey, it may be our destiny to wander a full 40 years or more in the wilderness of doubt and divided sentiments.

Benjamin Graham
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.

Benjamin Graham
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.

Benjamin Graham
Successful investment may become substantially a matter of techniques and criteria that are learnable, rather than the product of unique and incommunicable mental powers.

Benjamin Graham
The money cost of the reservoir plan literally fades into insignificance when it is compared with the financial burden which the great depression imposed on the nation.

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

Benjamin Graham
If General Motors is worth $60 a share to an investor it must be because the full common-stock ownership of this gigantic enterprise as a whole is worth 43 million (shares) times $60, or no less than $2,600 million.

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

Benjamin Graham
The underlying principles of sound investment should not alter from decade to decade, but the application of these principles must be adapted to significant changes in the financial mechanisms and climate.

Benjamin Graham
It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.

Benjamin Graham
Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.

Benjamin Graham
The investor would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: "Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop".

Benjamin Graham
We have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly make money by thus "following the market". We do not hesitate to declare this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.

Benjamin Graham
Before you place your financial future in the hands of an adviser, it's imperative that you find someone who not only makes you comfortable but whose honesty is beyond reproach.

Benjamin Graham
Calculate a stock's price/earnings ratio yourself, using Graham's formula of current price divided by average earnings over the past three years.

Benjamin Graham
The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.

Benjamin Graham