“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 people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.

The best values today are often found in the stocks that were once hot and have since gone cold.

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.

For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some price they would be so dear that they would be sold.

In the short-run, the market is a voting machine – reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability – but in the long- run, the market is a weighing machine.

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

Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock’s proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.

Nothing important on Wall Street can be counted on to occur exactly in the same way as it happened before.

To see how much a company is truly earning on the capital it deploys in its businesses, look beyond EPS to Return on Invested Capital (ROIC).

Undervaluations caused by neglect or prejudice may persist for an inconveniently long time, and the same applies to inflated prices caused by over-enthusiasm or artificial stimulants.

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.

The investor should be aware that even though safety of its principal and interest may be unquestioned, a long term bond could vary widely in market price in response to changes in interest rates.

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.

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

Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?

The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

There are two kinds of humans – the intelligent, who have no religion, and the religious, who have no intellect.

I discovered that the most dangerous mask is the one worn by intelligent people because they are clever at their disguise.

We know that the Zanj (blacks) are the least intelligent and the least discerning of mankind.

Unlike so many Dylan-writer-wannabes and phony ‘encyclopedia’ compilers, Sean Wilentz makes me feel he was in the room when he chronicles events that I participated in.

Finally a breath of fresh words founded in hardcore, intelligent research.