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

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.

Speculators often prosper through ignorance; it is a cliché that in a roaring bull market knowledge is superfluous and experience is a handicap. But the typical experience of the speculator is one of temporary profit and ultimate loss

In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.

Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.

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.

By developing your discipline and courage, you can refuse to let other people’s mood swings govern your financial destiny. In the end, how your investments behave is much less important than how you behave.

Mr. Market’s job is to provide you with prices; your job is to decide whether it is to your advantage to act on them. You no not have to trade with hime just because he constantly begs you to.

In other words, the market is not a weighing machine, on which the value of each issue is recorded by an exact and impersonal mechanism, in accordance with its specific qualities.

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.

The Reservoir plan is an engineering mechanism applied to the field of economics, and in its essence it has nothing to do with democracy or any other political philosophy.

Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can’t bear to see it.

Plato’s dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays.

Bears don’t live on Park Avenue.

Let argument bear no unmusical sound.

I was christened Edward. My sister gave me the name Bear when I was a week old and it has stuck.

Only good things come from God’s hands. He never gives you more than you can bear. Every burden prepares you for eternity.

my love of water … is mingled with and almost indistinguishable from a fear of water (I can float in a vertical position – I enter a fugue state – but I cannot bear to bury my face in water).

Life sometimes brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear. But bear them you can, and bear them you will, and your life can have a purpose.