“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.”

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

The intelligent investor gets interested in big growth stocks not when they are at their most popular – but when something goes wrong.

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.

Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.

The intelligent investor should recognize that market panics can create great prices for good companies and good prices for great companies.

Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.

Successful investing professionals are disciplined and consistent and they think a great deal about what they do and how they do it.

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.

We sailed to Italy on the Andrea Doria, a year before it sank, and Zoot (Sims) and I played a lot of ping-pong on deck during that trip.

Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.

By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral subjects..It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.

The market is a pendulum that forever swings between unsustainable optimism (which makes stocks too expensive) and unjustified pessimism (which makes them too cheap). The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock’s posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.

The ultimate judge of your swing is the flight of the ball.

I expect to play golf until I am 90-even longer if anybody figures out a way to swing a club from a rocking chair.

I swing big, with everything I’ve got. I hit big or I miss big. I like to live as big as I can.