“It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.”

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

Those with the enterprise lack the money and those with the money lack the enterprise to buy stocks when they are cheap.

The beauty of periodic rebalancing is that it forces you to base your investing decisions on a simple, objective standard.

The people of the United States will not tolerate another deep depression that arises not from any lack of natural resources, productive capacity or man and brain power, but solely from imperfections in the functioning of the system of finance capitalism.

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

Same with golf: pick up a club. But not many can go out and get in a race car and experience a drive at over 200 miles an hour.

If the Indy Racing League didn’t have the Indianapolis 500, do you think it would have lasted more than six months? No chance.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

I wanted to have a career that would last a hundred years if possible.

Nothing compares to the Indianapolis 500.

Today, you have 100% of your life left.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the ‘National Geographic’ covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.