Benjamin Graham quotes

Benjamin Graham was a British-born American economist and professional investor, recognized as the father of value investing. His groundbreaking principles on security analysis laid the foundation for modern investment strategies. He greatly influenced generations of investors, including Warren Buffett. Here are 83 of his quotes:

To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realize; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks. (Benjamin Graham)
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham
[Shorter variant:] In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. View quote
Benjamin Graham
All the real money in investment will have to be made-as most of it has been in the past- not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham
The purchase of a bargain issue presupposes that the market's current appraisal is wrong, or at least that the buyer's idea of value is more likely to be right than the market's. In this process the investor sets his judgement against that of the market. To some this may seem arrogant or foolhardy. View quote
Benjamin Graham
Investing is most intelligent when it is most businesslike. View quote
Benjamin Graham
In the short-run, the market is a voting machine - reflecting a voter-registration test that requires only money, not intelligence or emotional stability - but in the long- run, the market is a weighing machine. View quote
Benjamin Graham
The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character. View quote
Benjamin Graham
Unusually rapid growth cannot keep up forever; when a company has already registered a brilliant expansion, its very increase in size makes a repetition of its achievement more difficult. (Benjamin Graham)
A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial say, more than a third from cost or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham
The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices. View quote
Benjamin Graham
Do not let anyone else run your business. View quote
Benjamin Graham
Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price. View quote
Benjamin Graham
Stocks can be dynamite. View quote
Benjamin Graham
Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed. View quote
Benjamin Graham
THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression. View quote
Benjamin Graham
In most cases the favorable price performance will be accompanied by a well-defined improvement in the average earnings, in the dividend, and in the balance-sheet position. Thus in the long run the market test and the ordinary business test of a successful equity commitment tend to be largely identical. (Benjamin Graham)
The volume of credit depends upon three factors: the desire to borrow, the ability to lend and the desire to lend. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham
The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion. View quote
Benjamin Graham
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. View quote
Benjamin Graham