Bernard M. Baruch

Wise quotes from Bernard M. Baruch:
I highly recommend the book (one of the best I ever read):
My Own Story – written by Bernard at the age of 87 in 1957.

Bernard Baruch was a stock market speculator who became a millionaire by age 30 in the early 1900’s and eventually a statesman and advisor to multiple Presidents during WWI and WWII.

Wikipedia:

Bernard Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina to Simon and Belle Baruch. He was the second of four sons. His father Dr. Simon Baruch (1840-1921) was a German immigrant of Jewish ethnicity who came to the United States in 1855. He became a surgeon on the staff of Confederate general Robert E. Lee during the American Civil War and a pioneer in physical therapy. His mother’s Sephardic Jewish ancestors came to New York in the 1800s and were in the shipping business. In 1881 the family moved to New York City, and Bernard Baruch graduated from the City College of New York eight years later. He eventually became a broker and then a partner in the firm of A. Housman and Company. With his earnings and commissions he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $18,000 (~$458K in 2007 dollars). There he amassed a fortune before the age of thirty via speculation in the sugar market. In 1903 he had his own brokerage firm and had gained the reputation of “The Lone Wolf on Wall Street” because of his refusal to join any other financial house. By 1910, he had become one of Wall Street’s financial leaders.

• A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.
• Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
• I made my money by selling too soon.
  I never lost money by turning a profit.
• Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.
• Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock.
• 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.

Please note that these simplified quotes don’t even scratch the surface of the contents of this book – it may even be an insult to list so few.