“The ideal form of common stock analysis leads to a valuation of the issue which can be compared with the current price to determine whether or not the security is an attractive purchase.”

Both individual skill (art) and chance are important factors in determining success or failure.

Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.

To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a true margin of safety is one that can be demonstrated by figures, by persuasive reasoning, and by reference to a body of actual experience.

The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.

The Reservoir system will function not only as an equalizer of business conditions, but also as a national store to meet further emergencies, such as war and drought, and-most important of all-as the concrete means of developing a steadily higher living standard for all.

High valuations entail high risks.

Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies’ performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time.

It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.

The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.

Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.

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

The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.

The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor’s own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right or at least valuable answers.

The sillier the market’s behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business like investor.

there is a tendency in part of Wall Street people to pay excessive attention to the most recent figures and the present financial picture.

To enjoy a reasonable chance for continued better than average results, the investor must follow policies which are (1) inherently sound and promising, and (2) not popular on Wall Street.

I used to be a very angry person, I used to throw things and break them. Then I had five years of constant psycho-analysis, and I don’t get angry any more.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

I know quite a few fellow members of the news analysis and commentary business, and I have it from the highest-placed sources, on the record, that each and every one of our children is a genius.

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

I do my own analysis on the teams I am refereeing.

The mistake that the Bush administration should admit to is not so much that they made the wrong choices. They made the right analysis; they made the right choices. But what they did wrong was the execution of those choices. That was wrong.

Invaluable….the best one-stop source I’ve seen for what various officials actually said at various times, suffused with intelligent analysis.

The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.