Bernard Baruch Quotes

Our problem in money-making or government affairs is how to remain properly venturesome and experimental without making fools of ourselves.

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything everynight before you go to bed.

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

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.

Chance sometimes opens the door, but luck belongs to the good players.

The longer I operated on Wall Street the more distrustful I became of tips and inside information of every kind. Given time, I believe that inside information can break the Bank of England

Although the shooting war is over, we are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer.

Even when we know what is right, too often we fail to act. More often we grab greedily for the day, letting tomorrow bring what it will, putting off the unpleasant and unpopular.

The essence of any plan for financing old age is saving-to put aside some part of today's earnings for the future. Anything that saps the value of savings-and inflation is the worst single threat-is the enemy of the aged and of those who expect to grow old.

There are no such things as incurables. There are only things for which man has not found a cure.

I was the son of an immigrant. I experienced bigotry, intolerance and prejudice, even as so many of you have. Instead of allowing these thing to embitter me, I took them as spurs to more strenuous effort. .

Most of the successful people I know mostly listen, not talk.

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth.

Never answer a critic, unless he's right.

Unless each man produces more than he receives, increases his output, there will be less for him than all the others.

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.

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.

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

Colleges don't teach economics properly. Unfortunately we learn little from the experience of the past. An economist must know, besides his subject, ethics, logic, philosophy, the humanities and sociology, in fact everything that is part of how we live and react to one another.

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

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.

Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.

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.

I am interested in physical medicine because my father was. I am interested in medical research because I believe in it. I am interested in arthritis because I have it.

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

You can't repeal human nature by an Act of Congress.

Gold has worked down from Alexander's time... When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory.

Become more humble as the market goes your way.

Don't speculate unless you can make it a full time job.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I have known men who could see through the motivations of others with the skill of a clairvoyant; only to prove blind to their own mistakes. I have been one of those men.

All economic movements, by their very nature, are motivated by crowd psychology.

Information cannot serve as an effective substitute for thinking.

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

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

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they arent still there, hes no longer a political leader.

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

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

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.

Never play tips from "insiders." They can't see the forest for the trees.

Now is always the hardest time to invest.

Recipe for success: Be polite, prepare yourself for whatever you are asked to do, keep yourself tidy, be cheerful, don't be envious, be honest with yourself so you will be honest with others, be helpful, interest yourself in your job, don't pity yourself, be quick to praise, be loyal to your friends, avoid prejudices, be independent, interest yourself in politics, and read the newspapers.

A dangerous fallacy is to repudiate freedom in favor of an unknown future. What else but our own sturdy reliance on freedom can explain the unexampled record this country has made? In a period scarcely twice my own lifetime it has risen from nothingness to become the world's greatest power. It has become the ark of the covenant of freedom.

I get the facts, I study them patiently, I apply imagination.