“The purpose of this book is to supply, in the form suitable for laymen, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment policy.”

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.

Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same.

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

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

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

If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what`s going to happen to the stock market.

The volume of credit depends upon three factors: the desire to borrow, the ability to lend and the desire to lend.

We urge the beginner in security buying not to waste his efforts and his money in trying to beat the market. Let him study security values and initially test out his judgment on price versus value with the smallest possible sums.

The thing that I have been emphasizing in my own work for the last few years has been the group approach. To try to buy groups of stocks that meet some simple criterion for being undervalued-regardless of the industry and with very little attention to the individual company.

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

Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.

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

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.

THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression.

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.

It’s nonsensical to derive a price/earnings ratio by dividing the known current price by unknown future earnings.

“to industry.’ Let us change the word, ‘industry,’ to ‘persevering prayer,’ and the motto will be more Christian and more worthy of universal adoption.

Nothing is impossible,’ said one of the seven sages of Greece.

An adopted son shall never take the family, name and the estate of his natural father, the funeral cake follows the family, name and the estate, the funeral offerings of him who gives, his son in adoption cease, as far as that son is concerned.

Shame on those breasts of stone that cannot melt in soft adoption of another’s sorrow.

You can keep ‘consumer’ DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.

Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?!

Too many children in foster care are falling through cracks. Be a hero, take the time learn about adoption today.

My sister is Korean and my parents adopted her about three years before I was born and that is how I grew up.