Quotes in Investing

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.

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

In the short run the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.

He who sells what isn't his'n, Must buy it back or go to prison.

The greatest business people I've met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable.