Balance Sheets Quotes

• Never invest in a company without understanding its finances. The biggest losses in stocks come from companies with poor balance sheets.

  Peter Lynch

  Loss, Understanding, Balance

  Peter Lynch (2012). “Beating the Street”, p.306, Simon and Schuster

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• The two most important things in any company do not appear in its balance sheet: its reputation and its people.

  Henry Ford

  Two, People, Balance

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• It sounds extraordinary, but it's a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.

  Mary Archer

  Business, Reading, Balance

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• All a company report and balance sheet can tell you is the past and the present. They cannot tell future.

  Nicolas Darvas

  Future, Past, Balance

  Nicolas Darvas (2006). “How I Made $2 Million in the Stock Market: The Darvas system for stock market profits”, p.98, Harriman House Limited

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• There are men who can write poetry, and there are men who can read balance sheets. The men who can read balance sheets cannot write.

  Henry R. Luce

  Writing, Men, Balance

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• Accounting does not make corporate earnings or balance sheets more volatile. Accounting just increases the transparency of volatility in earnings.

  Diane Garnick

  Balance, Doe, Earning

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• The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality.

  Chris Chocola

  Reality, Cash Flow, Balance

  "Entrepreneurial Minds: Clarifying your expectations". Business Week, October 26, 2014.

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• It's easier to teach a poet how to read a balance sheet than it is to teach an accountant how to write.

  Henry R. Luce

  Writing, Editing, Balance

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• A good reputation for yourself and your company is an invaluable asset not reflected in the balance sheets.

  Li Ka-shing

  Balance, Reputation, Assets

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• Balance Sheets are meaningless. Our accounting systems are still based on the assumption that 80% of costs are manual labor.

  Peter Drucker

  Balance, Cost, Assumption

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• Investment banking has, in recent years, resembled a casino, and the massive scale of gambling losses has dragged down traditional activities as banks try to rebuild their balance sheets.

  Vince Cable

  Loss, Gambling, Years

  "The Storm ... how to survive it (and how to prevent its return)" by Vince Cable, www.theguardian.com. March 24, 2009.

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• In financing growing companies, we always looked for human value that didn't appear on the balance sheet.

  Michael Milken

  Business, Balance, Growing

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• We always look at the margin of safety in the balance sheet and then worry about the business.

  Peter Cundill

  Safety, Worry, Balance

  4 Copy quote

• A work of art expresses itself as a balance sheet pitting the spoken against the unspoken.

  Russell Sherman

  Art, Balance, Sheets

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• Evidently stockholders have forgotten more than to look at balance sheets. They have forgotten also that they are owners of a business and not merely owners of a quotation on the stock ticker. It is time, and high time, that the millions of American shareholders turned their eyes from the daily market reports long enough to give some attention to the enterprises themselves of which they are the proprietors, and which exist for their benefit and at their pleasure.

  Benjamin Graham

  Eye, Long, Giving

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• For most businesses, America is the most important asset on their balance sheet.

  Hillary Clinton

  America, Balance, Important

  Source: time.com

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• You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet

  Bill McKibben

  Healthy, Balance, Fuel

  Bill McKibben (2013). “Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist”, p.103, Macmillan

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• No one would look just at a firm's revenues to assess how well it was doing. Far more relevant is the balance sheet, which shows assets and liability. That is also true for a country.

  Joseph Stiglitz

  Country, Balance, Looks

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• In most cases the favorable price performance will be accompanied by a well-defined improvement in the average earnings, in the dividend, and in the balance-sheet position. Thus in the long run the market test and the ordinary business test of a successful equity commitment tend to be largely identical.

  Benjamin Graham

  Running, Commitment, Successful

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

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• A company is an organic, living, breathing thing, not just an income sheet and balance sheet. You have to lead it with that in mind.

  Carly Fiorina

  Breathing, Mind, Balance

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• ...I couldn't but surmise that the devil, looking at the cruel wars that Christianity has occasioned, the persecutions, the tortures Christian has inflicted on Christian, the unkindness, the hypocracy, the intolerance, must consider the balance sheet with complacency. And when he remembers that it has laid upon mankind the bitter burden of the sense of sin that has darkened the beauty of the starry night and cast a baleful shadow on the passing plesures of a world to be enjoyed, he must chuckle as he murmurs: give the devil his due.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Christian, War, Night

  W. Somerset Maugham (2008). “The Razor's Edge”, p.226, Random House

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• Though they control scores of industrial, commercial, mining and tourist corporations, not one bears the name Rothschild. Being private partnerships, the family houses never need to, and never do, publish a single public balance sheet, or any other report of their financial condition.

  Frederic Morton

  Names, House, Balance

  Frederic Morton (2014). “The Rothschilds: A Family Portrait”, p.18, Diversion Books

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• A bankruptcy judge can fix your balance sheet, but he cannot fix your company.

  Gordon Bethune

  Judging, Balance, Sheets

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• Unfortunately our stock is somehow not well understood by the markets. The market compares us with generic companies. We need to look at Biocon as a bellwether stock. A stock that is differentiated, a stock that is focused on R&D, and a very-very strong balance sheet with huge value drivers at the end of it.

  Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

  Strong, Balance, Needs

  "Market needs to look at Biocon as a bellwether stock: Kiran Mazumdar Shaw". ET Now Interview, economictimes.indiatimes.com. April 26, 2013.

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• Some day, on the corporate balance sheet, there will be an entry which reads, "Information"; for in most cases, the information is more valuable than the hardware which processes it.

  Grace Hopper

  Balance, Information, Process

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