Customer Reviews

Dean LeBaron's Book of Investment Quotations

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Recently I have bought and borrowed several books on quotations as part of a project. What I have noticed is that it is quality not quantity that matters. If you are like me, you would probably prefer to read ten brilliant quotes over five pages than five brilliant quotes over ten pages. You may notice that not all quotation books are created equal, even though they may contrive to be equal or superior in appearance.

For example, the Forbes book of business contains over 10,000 quotes, and only a few pages in the entire book are dedicated to business quotations. Many quotations are by philosphers and poets. Philosophy is important, but would you hire a philosopher to run your business?

Forbes book is not what it pretends to be, and it does not have a keyword search, which I found quite frustrating when looking for the single Rockefeller 'I believe' quote I wanted to write down.

On the other hand, I am very impressed with LeBaron's book. It has close to 2,800 quotes, organised according to various investment themes, such as active portfolio management, contrarian investing, risk management, manias panics and crashes, economic forecasting, politics and investing,technical analysis, value investing to mention a few of the thirty or so themes. You can also do a keyword search, although it's not as detailed as in say the Oxford Book of Quotations. I found myself copiously copying down pages of notes of notable quotes, many from Warren Buffett.

Here are a few examples:

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. Warren Buffett

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonasble one persists in adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. George Bernard Shaw

Strangers are what friends are made of. Cullen Hightower.

Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward. Unknown.

Banking is necessary. Bankers are not. Bill Gates.

So from Soros to Shakespeare, and Aristotle to Wilde you can discover a wide variety of quotes which are both directly applicable to business, or can be applied in a business context.

Many welcome surprises await between the covers. In case you're wondering about a similarly titled and far less expensive Dean LeBaron's Book of The Ultimate Book of Investment Quotations (The Ultimate Series), as far as I can tell from using the look inside feature on Amazon, both these books are virtually identical, with same chapter headings, and opening pages, and quotes, the only difference being the number of pages, which means one would seem to be an earlier edition that has been retitled.

So, if you you want to get the best bang for the buck, invest in the other book.

I think you will enjoy it, and I hope you found this review helpful.