“When somebody asserts that a stock has an earning power of so much, I am sure that the person who hears him doesn’t know what he means, and there is a good chance that the man who uses it doesn’t know what it means.”

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.

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

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

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

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.

The modern world is not geared properly to the storage of goods.

Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish.

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

Speculative stock movements are carried too far in both directions, frequently in the general market and at all times in at least some of the individual issues.

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.

The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain.

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.

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.

Rather should we say that the market is a voting machine, whereon countless individuals register choices which are the product partly of reason and partly of emotion.

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

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”.

Education is not solely about earning a great living. It means living a great life.

Consuming is not the aim of life. Earning as much money as one can is not the real purpose of life.

Live comedy’s a very reckless, foolhardy profession. You’re only as good as your last gig so earnings fluctuate.

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

Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.

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

The biggest asset you have is your earning capacity, and that depends entirely on your attitude.

The biggest asset you have is your earning capacity, and that depends entirely on your attitude.