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

It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.

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.

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.