Top 160 Benjamin Graham Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.”

— Benjamin Graham

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2. “The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”

— Benjamin Graham

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3. “The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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5. “Investing isn’t about beating others at their game. It’s about controlling yourself at your own game.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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7. “Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.”

— Benjamin Graham

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8. “The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you’re beating the market but by whether you’ve put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.”

— Benjamin Graham

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9. “Losing some money is an inevitable part of investing, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. But to be an intelligent investor, you must take responsibility for ensuring that you never lose most or all of your money.”

— Benjamin Graham

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10. “High valuations entail high risks.”

— Benjamin Graham

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11. “A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.”

— Benjamin Graham

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12. “The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.”

— Benjamin Graham

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13. “People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

16. “At heart, “uncertainty” and “investing” are synonyms.”

— Benjamin Graham

17. “Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.”

— Benjamin Graham

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18. “Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.”

— Benjamin Graham

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19. “The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.”

— Benjamin Graham

20. “An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

22. “The intelligent investor shouldn’t ignore Mr. Market entirely. Instead, you should do business with him- but only to the extent that it serves your interests.”

— Benjamin Graham

23. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

24. “The intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.”

— Benjamin Graham

25. “If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.”

— Benjamin Graham

26. “The sillier the market’s behavior, the greater the opportunity for the business like investor.”

— Benjamin Graham

27. “Mr. Market’s job is to provide you with prices; your job is to decide whether it is to your advantage to act on them. You no not have to trade with hime just because he constantly begs you to.”

— Benjamin Graham

28. “In the old legend the wise men finally boiled down the history of mortal affairs into a single phrase: ‘This too will pass.’”

— Benjamin Graham

29. “In an ideal world, the intelligent investor would hold stocks only when they are cheap and sell them when they become overpriced, then duck into the bunker of bonds and cash until stocks again become cheap enough to buy.”

— Benjamin Graham

30. “Although there are good and bad companies, there is no such thing as a good stock; there are only good stock prices, which come and go.”

— Benjamin Graham

31. “Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgment is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.”

— Benjamin Graham

32. “Mr. Market does not always price stocks the way an appraiser or a private buyer would value a business. Instead, when stocks are going up, he happily pays more than their objective value; and, when they are going down, he is desperate to dump them for less than their true worth.”

— Benjamin Graham

33. “The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price.”

— Benjamin Graham

34. “Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

36. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

37. “Never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.”

— Benjamin Graham

38. “Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.”

— Benjamin Graham

39. “By refusing to pay too much for an investment, you minimize the chances that your wealth will ever disappear or suddenly be destroyed.”

— Benjamin Graham

40. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

41. “In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.”

— Benjamin Graham

42. “While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster.”

— Benjamin Graham

43. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

44. “I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions.”

— Benjamin Graham

45. “Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account nor in any part of your thinking.”

— Benjamin Graham

46. “Do not let anyone else run your business.”

— Benjamin Graham

47. “Price statistics show clearly that instability in raw-material prices is a prime cause of instability of other prices.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

49. “Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not translate into obvious profits for investors.”

— Benjamin Graham

50. “A stock is not just a ticker symbol or an electronic blip; it is an ownership interest in an actual business, with an underlying value that does not depend on its share price.”

— Benjamin Graham