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Such a study indicates that the greatest investment reward comes to those who by good luck or good sense find the occasional company that over the years can grow in sales and profits far more than industry as a whole. It further shows that when we believe we have found such a company we had better stick with it for a long period of time. It gives us a strong hint that such companies need not necessarily be young and small. Instead, regardless of size, what really counts is a management having both a determination to attain further important growth and an ability to bring its plans to completion.”

“I have already made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts.”

“Even in those earlier times, finding the really outstanding companies and staying with them through all the fluctuations of a gyrating market proved far more profitable to far more people than did the more colorful practice of trying to buy them cheap and sell them dear.”

“Never promote someone who hasn't made some bad mistakes, because if you do, you are promoting someone who has never done anything.”

“Most frequently given of such reasons is the conviction that a general stock market decline of some proportion is somewhere in the offing. In the preceding chapter I tried to show that postponing an attractive purchase because of fear of what the general market might do will, over the years, prove very costly. This is because the investor is ignoring a powerful influence about which he has positive knowledge through fear of a less powerful force about which, in the present state of human knowledge, he and everyone else is largely guessing.”

“Conversely, as such a stock rises to, say, 50 or 60 or 70, the urge to sell and take a profit now that the stock is “high” becomes irresistible to many people. Giving in to this urge can be very costly. This is because the genuinely worthwhile profits in stock investing have come from holding the surprisingly large number of stocks that have gone up many times from their original cost. The only true test of whether a stock is “cheap” or “high” is not its current price in relation to some former price, no matter how accustomed we may have become to that former price, but whether the company’s fundamentals are significantly more or less favorable than the current financial-community appraisal of that stock.”

“One, which I mention several times elsewhere, is the need for patience if big profits are to be made from investment. Put another way, it is often easier to tell what will happen to the price of a stock than how much time will elapse before it happens. The other is the inherently deceptive nature of the stock market. Doing what everybody else is doing at the moment, and therefore what you have an almost irresistible urge to do, is often the wrong thing to do at all.”

“When profit margins of a whole industry rise because of repeated price increases, the indication is not a good one for the long-range investor.”

“But his very best questions always popped out of his mind, unprepared, never having been written down in advance because they were the angle he picked up on the fly, as he heard an answer to a lesser question. Those creative questions were the art. It is what, in my mind, made his querying great.”

“The quality of the people involved in the company was just as critical. I use the word quality to encompass two quite different characteristics. One of these is business ability. Business ability can be further broken down into two very different types of skills. One of these is handling the day-to-day tasks of business with above-average efficiency. In the day-to-day tasks, I include a hundred and one matters, varying all the way from constantly seeking and finding better ways to produce more efficiently to watching receivables with sufficient closeness. In other words, operating skill implies above-average handling of the many things that have to do with the near-term operation of the business. However, in the business world, top-notch managerial ability also calls for another skill that is quite different. This is the ability to look ahead and make long-range plans that will produce significant future growth for the business without at the same time running financial risks that may invite disaster. Many companies contain managements that are very good at one or the other of these skills. However, for real success, both are necessary.”

“The only true test of whether a stock is “cheap” or “high” is not its current price in relation to some former price, no matter how accustomed we may have become to that former price, but whether the company's fundamentals are significantly more or less favorable than the current financial-community appraisal of that stock.”

“control its own destiny. It was later that I was to build on this base to conclude that even a strong sales arm is not enough. For a company to be a truly worthwhile investment, it must not only be able to sell its products, but also be able to ​appraise changing needs and desires of its customers; in other words, to master all that is implied in a true concept of marketing.”

“In a new plant for even established processes or products, there will probably be a shake-down period of six to eight weeks that will prove rather expensive. It takes this long to get the equipment adjusted to the required operating efficiency and to weed out the inevitable "bugs" that seem to occur in breaking in modern intricate machinery.”

“But recognizing changes in public taste and then reacting promptly to these changes is not enough. As has been said before, in the business world customers simply do not beat a path to the door of the man with the better mousetrap. In the competitive world of commerce it is vital to make the potential customer aware of the advantages of a product or service. This awareness can be created only by understanding what the potential buyer really wants (sometimes when the customer himself doesn’t clearly recognize why these advantages appeal to him) and explaining it to him not in the seller’s terms but in his terms.”

“For example, among investors with common stock holdings having a market value of a quarter to a half million dollars, the percentage who own twenty-five or more different stocks is appalling. It is not this number of twenty-five or more which itself is appalling. Rather it is that in the great majority of instances only a small percentage of such holdings is in attractive stocks about which the investor or his advisor has a high degree of knowledge.”

“Fighting unemployment by methods far more costly than the opening of bread lines and soup kitchens would not have been given serious consideration, regardless of which party might have been in office. Since 1932 all that is reversed. The Democrats may or may not be less concerned with a balanced federal budget than the Republicans. However, from President Eisenhower on down, with the possible exception of former Secretary of the Treasury Humphrey, the responsible Republican leadership has said again and again that if business should really turn down they would not hesitate to lower taxes or make whatever other deficit-producing moves were necessary to restore prosperity and eliminate unemployment. This is a far cry from the doctrines that prevailed prior to the big depression.”

“A company might be an extremely efficient manufacturer or an inventor might have a product with breathtaking possibilities, but this was never enough for a healthy business. Unless that business contained people capable of convincing others as to the worth of their product, such a business would never really control its own destiny. It was later that I was to build on this base to conclude that even a strong sales arm is not enough. For a company to be a truly worthwhile investment, it must not only be able to sell its products, but also be able to ​appraise changing needs and desires of its customers; in other words, to master all that is implied in a true concept of marketing.”― 

“This causes a vast increase in the amount of money, so that each individual unit of money, such as a dollar, becomes worth less than it was before. It takes lots more dollars to buy the same number of shares of stock. This, of course, is the classic form of inflation. In other words, war is always bearish on money. To sell stock at the threatened or actual outbreak of hostilities so as to get into cash is extreme financial lunacy. Actually just the opposite should be done. If an investor has about decided to buy a particular common stock and the arrival of a full-blown war scare starts knocking down the price, he should ignore the scare psychology of the moment and definitely begin buying.”