It is our argument that a sufficiently low price can turn a security of mediocre quality into a sound investment opportunity - provided that the buyer is informed and experienced and he practices adequate diversification. For, if the price is low enough to create a substantial margin of safety, the security thereby meets our criterion of investment.

Benjamin Graham

Investing isn't about beating others at their game. It's about controlling yourself at your own game.

Benjamin Graham

investing games

Successful investing is about managing risk, not avoiding it.

Benjamin Graham

investing risk successful

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.

Benjamin Graham

investing realist intelligent

Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed.

Benjamin Graham

money hope time

Mathematics is ordinarily considered as producing precise and dependable results; but in the stock market the more elaborate and abstruse the mathematics the more uncertain and speculative are the conclusions we draw there from. Whenever calculus is brought in, or higher algebra, you could take it as a warning that the operator was trying to substitute theory for experience, and usually also to give to speculation the deceptive guise of investment.

Benjamin Graham

investing trying giving

Always buy your straw hats in the Winter

Benjamin Graham

investing hats winter

The best way to measure your investing success is not by whether you're beating the market but by whether you've put in place a financial plan and a behavioral discipline that are likely to get you where you want to go.

Benjamin Graham

discipline want way

The function of the margin of safety is, in essence, that of rendering unnecessary an accurate estimate of the future.

Benjamin Graham

unnecessary safety essence

Before you invest, you must ensure that you have realistically assessed your probability of being right and how you will react to the consequences of being wrong.

Benjamin Graham

being-wrong probability investing

Losing some money is an inevitable part of investing, and there's nothing you can do to prevent it. But to be an intelligent investor, you must take responsibility for ensuring that you never lose most or all of your money.

Benjamin Graham

investing intelligent responsibility

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

Benjamin Graham

quality brain character

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.

Benjamin Graham

investing opportunity fall

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

Benjamin Graham

safety intelligent challenges

A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.

Benjamin Graham

investing too-much pay

In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

Benjamin Graham

adequate-knowledge hands world

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

Benjamin Graham

investment investing pay

Buy when most people, including experts, are pessimistic, and sell when they are actively optimistic.

Benjamin Graham

optimistic experts people

An intelligent investor gets satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite to those of the crowd.

Benjamin Graham

investing intelligent opposites

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

Benjamin Graham

investing thinking

Buy not on optimism, but on arithmetic.

Benjamin Graham

investing optimism intelligent