Benjamin Graham: Trending quotes (page 3)

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

Benjamin Graham

Part II, Chapter VI, The Question of Price Stability, p. 85
Storage and Stability (1937)

“Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter IX, Commodities, Gold, Credit as Money, p. 100 (See also Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, p. 89)

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

Benjamin Graham

Part II, Chapter V, Reservoir System and Commodities, p. 72
Storage and Stability (1937)

Suffering

“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”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 18

Question

“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.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 38

Idea

“The Reservoir plan is an engineering mechanism applied to the field of economics, and in its essence it has nothing to do with democracy or any other political philosophy.”

Benjamin Graham

Part V, Chapter XIX, The Reservoir Plan and Tradition, p. 232
Storage and Stability (1937)

Democracy

“It is a fact worth pondering that four centuries ago the evil of "an abundance or surplus" arose from its being kept off the market, while today the evil of surplus lies in its being thrown upon the market.”

Benjamin Graham

Part I, Chapter II, Government and Surplus Stocks, p. 28
Storage and Stability (1937)

Evil

“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

Part I, Chapter I, The Changing Role of Surplus Stocks, p. 4
Storage and Stability (1937)

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

Benjamin Graham

Part III, Chapter XIII, The Reservoir Plan and Credit Control, p. 154
Storage and Stability (1937)

Dependency

“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 book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 7, Portfolio Policy: The Positive Side, p. 75

“The investor has the benefit of the stock market's daily and changing appraisal of his holdings, for whatever that appraisal may be worth, and, second, that the investor is able to increase or decrease his investment at the market's daily figure—if he chooses. Thus the existence of a quoted market gives the investor certain options which he does not have if his security is unquoted. But it does not impose the current quotation on an investor who prefers to take his idea of value from some other source.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 41

Quotes , Idea , Change

“Wall Street has a few prudent principles; the trouble is that they are always forgotten when they are most needed.”

Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 16, Convertible Issues and Warrants, p. 225

“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

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 25

Business , Success

“Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.”

Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 20, "Margin of Safety": The Central Concept, p. 286

Intelligence

“The Reservoir system will function not only as an equalizer of business conditions, but also as a national store to meet further emergencies, such as war and drought, and-most important of all-as the concrete means of developing a steadily higher living standard for all.”

Benjamin Graham

Part II, Chapter IV, A Plan For Conserving Surplus, p. 50
Storage and Stability (1937)

War , Business

“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.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter II, The Issue of Cartels, p. 21

World

“The world has not learned the technique of balanced expansion without the resultant commercial and financial congestion.”

Benjamin Graham

Source: World Commodities and World Currencies (1944), Chapter I, The Problem of Raw Materials, p. 5

World , Learning

“You are neither right nor wrong because people agree with you.”

Benjamin Graham

As quoted by Warren Buffett, in an interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974)

People

“Even the most conservative must realize that the recent transformation of surplus from an individual to a national disaster implies a scathing indictment of our capitalist system as it has now developed.”

Benjamin Graham

Part I, Chapter I, The Changing Role of Surplus Stocks, p. 17
Storage and Stability (1937)

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

Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 20, "Margin of Safety": The Central Concept, p. 287

People