Quotes from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

“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.”
― quote from Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings

Popular quotes

“During these years of loss and sorrow, I have had to reconcile myself to the truth about my father, Osama bin Laden. I know now that since the first day of the first battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, my father has been killing other humans. He admitted as much to me, back in those days when I was his tea boy in Afghanistan. I often wonder if my father has killed so many times that the act of killing no longer brings him pleasure or pain. I am nothing like my father. While he prays for war, I pray for peace. And now we go our separate ways, each believing that we are right.”
― Jean Sasson, quote from Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World

“A great many people in North America believe that Canada and the United States, in a moment of inexplicable generosity, gave treaty rights to Native people as a gift. Of course, anyone familiar with the history of Indians in North America knows that Native people paid for every treaty right, and in some cases, paid more than once. The idea that either country gave First Nations something for free is horseshit.”
― Thomas King, quote from The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America

“I tried to get over you. I wanted so fucking bad to forget you. But every time I was with someone, it was you. Your hair, your eyes, your touch. You're all I fucking saw. You have a choice Georgia but I don't. I don't have a fucking choice, I never did. It's always been you. You destroyed me. I'm not the person I was before I met you and I can't go back. Nothing works anymore without you." ~Tristan”
― Adriane Leigh, quote from The Mourning After

“What did you call me?"

"Captain No-Fun.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Rome

“Angela’s in love with an angel.”
― Cynthia Hand, quote from Radiant

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.