The longer the bull market lasts the more severely investors will be affected with amnesia; after five years or so, many people no longer believe that bear markets are possible.

... Bond selection is primarily a negative art. It is a process of exclusion and rejection, rather than of search and acceptance.

... generally speaking there can be no high-grade obligations of a weak enterprise.

The market made up new standards as it went along, by accepting the current price - however high - as the sole measure of value. Any idea of safety based on this uncritical approach was clearly illusory and replete with danger.

Investment must always consider the price as well as the quality of the security.

An investment operation is one that can be justified on both qualitative and quantitative grounds.

... The soundness of the best investments must rest not upon legal rights or remedies but upon ample financial capacity of the enterprise.

The essence of proper bond selection consists, ... in obtaining specific and convincing factors of safety in compensation for the surrender of participation in profits.