Benjamin Graham Quotes

Cartels have spread and will spread as long as the world lacks an effective mechanism by which balanced expansion may be achieved without a resulting disruption of prices.

During periods of extreme fear or greed, you don't have the proper balance between those two to generate market efficiency and you get extremes in behavior.

Unfettered markets eventually get out of whack.

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

You may baptize as long as you want, but the Jew remains a Jew, the Chinese a Chinese and the Negro a Negro.

Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value-that they have stopped playing the asset game. They're not buying because it's a company with certain attributes. They're buying because the price is rising. People are playing games not related to any concept at all of what the long-term value of the enterprise is. And they know it.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike ...We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.

The stock market resembles a huge laundry in which institutions take in large blocks of each others washing ... without rhyme or reason.

A very long time ago, Grandmother had wanted to tell about all the things they did, but no one had bothered to ask. And now she had lost the urge.

As long as you have markets, you'll have excesses. People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started. I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter.

This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.

Error is none the better for being common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected.

The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit... People understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less... Coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing.

If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, then capitalism is not long for this world.

The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office.

The investor should be aware that even though safety of its principal and interest may be unquestioned, a long term bond could vary widely in market price in response to changes in interest rates.

In America, we have struggled too much, too long as a country trying to overcome racism and sexism and homophobia. We cannot go back to a more discriminatory society.

I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.

The confirmed prejudices of a thoughtful life are as hard to change as the confirmed habits of an indolent life; and as some must trifle away age because they trifled away youth, others must labor on in a maze of error because they have wandered there too long to find their way out.

Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth.... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.

When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit.

The house kept its own time, like the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the living room. People who happened by raised the weights, and as long as the weights were wound, the clock continued ticking away. But with people gone and the weights unattended, whole chunks of time were left to collect in deposits of faded life on the floor.

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

When "everything is awesome" we may miss what (and Who) is truly deserving of awe.