Bernard Baruch - Quotes

1. A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't still there, he's no longer a political leader.
2. A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.
3. Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.
4. Always do one thing less than you think you can do.
5. Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.
6. Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can't be done except by liars.
7. During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.
8. Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
9. I made my money by selling too soon.
10. I never lost money by turning a profit.
11. 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.
12. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
13. If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.
14. If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.
15. In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
16. Let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war.
17. Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.
18. Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
19. Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking.
20. Never follow the crowd.
21. Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock.
22. No man should think himself a zero, and think he can do nothing about the state of the world.
23. Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.
24. Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.
25. One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything everynight before you go to bed.
26. Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see.
27. The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.
28. The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.
29. The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
30. The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.
31. There are no such things as incurable, there are only things for which man has not found a cure.
32. There is something about inside information which seems to paralyse a man's reasoning powers.
33. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
34. Two things are bad for the heart - running up stairs and running down people.
35. Unless each man produces more than he receives, increases his output, there will be less for him than all the others.
36. Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
37. We can't cross that bridge until we come to it, but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time.
38. We did not all come over on the same ship, but we are all in the same boat.
39. We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.
40. 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.
41. When good news about the market hits the front page of the New York Times, sell.
42. You can overcome anything if you don't bellyache.
43. You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government.

Bernard Baruch