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

It is a fact worth pondering that four centuries ago the evil of “an abundance or surplus” arose from its being kept off the market, while today the evil of surplus lies in its being thrown upon the market.

The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing … without rhyme or reason.

To establish the right price for a stock, the market must have adequate information, but it by no means follows that is the market has this information it will thereupon establish the right price.

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.

A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.

An investor calculates what a stock is worth, based on the value of its businesses.

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

Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.

Intelligent investment is more a matter of mental approach than it is of technique. A sound mental approach toward stock fluctuations is the touchstone of all successful investment under present-day conditions.

There is no reason to feel any shame in hiring someone to pick stocks or mutual funds for you. But there’s one responsibility that you must never delegate. You, and no one but you, must investigate whether an adviser is trustworthy and charges reasonable fees.

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.

Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.

Even defensive portfolios should be changed from time to time, especially if the securities purchased have an apparently excessive advance and can be replaced by issues much more reasonable priced.

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

The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.

Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

A pioneer is generally a man who has outlived his credit or fortune in the cultivated parts.

Truth is not only a man’s ornament but his instrument; it is the great man’s glory, and the poor man’s stock: a man’s truth is his livelihood, his recommendation, his letters of credit.

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.

The people who did the collateralized mortgage obligations, sold them to pension funds, then sold them short, then bought credit default swap insurance on them, are just amazing. They are a law unto themselves.

There are a lot of women who feel that they have done all the work in their relationship only for someone else to step in and take the love and credit for it.

How have you arrived at your thinking? Where do your ideas and knowledge come from, and why do you credit some knowledge and discredit others?

I don’t think she realized how much she cared for him, or he for her, until the end. Hasn’t someone said a woman may be known by the men who love her enough to die for her? (If they haven’t, I claim the credit myself.)

As many micro-credit schemes across the world can testify, investment in women is the best investment for the future.