Great Throughts Treasury

"If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he is wrong."

"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

"If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace."

"If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right."

"If you have made a mistake cut your losses as quickly as possible."

"I'm not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why."

"In America, if you put your mind to it you can have anything you want. You just can't have everything you want."

"In trading/ investing it's not about how much you make, but how much you don't lose."

"Increased wages, higher pensions, more unemployment insurance, all are of no avail if the purchasing power of money falls faster."

"Let us not be deceived - we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us."

"Making a success of the job at hand is the best step toward the kind you want."

"Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why."

"Most of the successful people I?ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking."

"My fellow citizens of the world, we are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead.... Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation.... We must elect World Peace or World Destruction."

"Never answer a critic, unless he's right."

"Never follow the crowd."

"Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock."

"No man can humiliate me or disturb me. I won't let him."

"No man should think himself a zero, and think he can do nothing about the state of the world."

"Nobody ever lost money taking a profit."

"None of us can be free of conflict and woe. Even the greatest men have had to accept disappointments as their daily bread. ... The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them."

"Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu Norman of the Bank of England....At the time of the Banks action I warned of its consequences....I felt that sooner or later the market had to break."

"Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure."

"Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all."

"Only liars manage to always be out during bad times and in during good times."

"Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration. Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human dignity. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics."

"Pliability: Consider and reconsider the facts and your opinions. Stubbornness as to opinions ? ?Cockiness? ? Must be entirely eliminated."

"Science has taught us how to put the atom to work. But to make it work for good instead of for evil lies in the domain dealing with the principles of human duty. We are now facing a problem more of ethics than physics."

"So efficient are the available instruments of slavery; fingerprints, lie detectors, brain washings, gas chambers; that we shiver at the thought of political change which might put these instruments in the hands of men of hate."

"Society can progress if men's labors show a profit - if they yield more than is put in. To produce at a loss must leave less for all to share."

"Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil."

"The ability to express an idea is well-nigh as important as the idea itself."

"The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles."

"The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves."

"The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible."

"The terror created by weaponry has never stopped men from employing them."

"There is something about inside information which seems to paralyze a man's reasoning powers."

"Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter."

"To me - old age is always ten years older than I am."

"To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am."

"To most people loneliness is a doom. Yet loneliness is the very thing which God has chosen to be one of the schools of training for His very own. It is the fire that sheds the dross and reveals the gold."

"Two things are bad for the heart - running up stairs and running down people."

"Vote for the man who promises least. He'll be the least disappointing."

"We are in the midst of a cold war*which is getting warmer. *The term 'cold war' was originated by Baruch in 1947."

"We are living in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is only his as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and his possessions at the call of the state."

"We can't cross a bridge until we come to it; but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time."

"We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves."

"Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought."

"When beggars and shoeshine boys, barbers and beauticians can tell you how to get rich it is time to remind yourself that there is no more dangerous illusion than the belief that one can get something for nothing."

"When good news about the market hits the front page of the New York Times, sell."