Benjamin Graham Quotations

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

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

High valuations entail high risks.

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

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Stocks can be dynamite.

Do not let anyone else run your business

The history of the past fifty years, and longer, indicates that a diversified holding of representative common stocks will prove more profitable over a stretch of years than a bond portfolio, with one important provisio that the shares must be purchased at reasonable market levels, that is, levels that are reasonable in the light of fairly well-defined standards derived from past experience.

Nothing in finance is more fatuous and harmful, in our opinion, than the firmly established attitude of common stock investors regarding questions of corporate management. That attitude is summed up in the phrase: "If you don't like the management, sell your stock." [...] The public owners seem to have abdicated all claim to control over the paid superintendents of their property

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.