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

There is a close logical connection between the concept of a safety margin and the principle of diversification.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you’re investing when you’re speculating.

Both a priori reasoning and experience teach us that as as these funds grow larger the geometrical rate of growth by compound interest ultimately defeats itself.

As in roulette, same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

In security analysis the prime stress is laid upon protection against untoward events. We obtain this protection by insisting upon margins of safety, or values well in excess of the price paid.

The investor’s primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

We have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly make money by thus “following the market”. We do not hesitate to declare this approach is as fallacious as it is popular.

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

It should be remembered that a decline of 50% fully offsets a preceding advance of 100%.

If fees consume more than 1% of your assets annually, you should probably shop for another adviser.

Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.

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.