Top 160 Benjamin Graham Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “If I have noticed anything over these 60 years on Wall Street, it is that people do not succeed in forecasting what’s going to happen to the stock market.”

— Benjamin Graham

52. “The best values today are often found in the stocks that were once hot and have since gone cold.”

— Benjamin Graham

53. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

54. “To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow.”

— Benjamin Graham

55. “No statement is more true and better applicable to Wall Street than the famous warning of Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.”

— Benjamin Graham

56. “It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune; and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. – Nathan Mayer Rothschild.”

— Benjamin Graham

57. “Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.”

— Benjamin Graham

58. “The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor’s own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right or at least valuable answers.”

— Benjamin Graham

59. “The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.”

— Benjamin Graham

60. “Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.”

— Benjamin Graham

61. “The story of Joseph in Egypt and of the seven fat and the seven lean years has passed into the homely wisdom of the ages; but our economic thinking seems to have lost contact with so simple and basic approach to prudent management of a nations welfare.”

— Benjamin Graham

62. “To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a true margin of safety is one that can be demonstrated by figures, by persuasive reasoning, and by reference to a body of actual experience.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

68. “The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain.”

— Benjamin Graham

69. “The value of any investment is, and always must be, a function of the price you pay for it.”

— Benjamin Graham

70. “The only thing you should do with pro forma earnings is ignore them.”

— Benjamin Graham

71. “Stocks can be dynamite.”

— Benjamin Graham

72. “The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.”

— Benjamin Graham

73. “Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

75. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

76. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

77. “The most striking thing about Graham’s discussion of how to allocate your assets between stocks and bonds is that he never mentions the word “age”.”

— Benjamin Graham

78. “Why should the cotton growers suffer if there is shortage of wheat?”

— Benjamin Graham

79. “Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.”

— Benjamin Graham

80. “Nothing important on Wall Street can be counted on to occur exactly in the same way as it happened before.”

— Benjamin Graham

81. “The ideal form of common stock analysis leads to a valuation of the issue which can be compared with the current price to determine whether or not the security is an attractive purchase.”

— Benjamin Graham

82. “I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities.”

— Benjamin Graham

83. “Avoid second-quality issues in making up a portfolio unless they are demonstrable bargains.”

— Benjamin Graham

84. “Instead of passing blithely over into that Promised Land, flowing almost literally with milk and honey, it may be our destiny to wander a full 40 years or more in the wilderness of doubt and divided sentiments.”

— Benjamin Graham

85. “Nearly everyone interested in common stocks wants to be told by someone else what he thinks the market is going to do. The demand being there, it must be supplied.”

— Benjamin Graham

86. “For 99 issues out of 100 we could say that at some price they are cheap enough to buy and at some price they would be so dear that they would be sold.”

— Benjamin Graham

87. “It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.”

— Benjamin Graham

88. “The volume of credit depends upon three factors: the desire to borrow, the ability to lend and the desire to lend.”

— Benjamin Graham

89. “A speculator gambles that a stock will go up in price because somebody else will pay even more for it.”

— Benjamin Graham

90. “Good managements produce a good average market price, and bad managements produce bad market prices.”

— Benjamin Graham

91. “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.”

— Benjamin Graham

92. “Always buy your straw hats in the Winter.”

— Benjamin Graham

93. “To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.”

— Benjamin Graham

94. “Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.”

— Benjamin Graham

95. “Buy cheap and sell dear.”

— Benjamin Graham

96. “Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.”

— Benjamin Graham

97. “The existence of such a war chest might go far to strengthen our prestige and frighten off any would be assailant.”

— Benjamin Graham

98. “It requires strength of character in order to think and to act in opposite fashion from the crowd and also patience to wait for opportunities that may be spaced years apart.”

— Benjamin Graham

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

— Benjamin Graham

100. “There is something paradoxical in the fact that by establishing an export market we subject our entire domestic production to the vagaries of that market.”

— Benjamin Graham