Bernard Baruch

Bernard Mannes Baruch was an American financier, stock market speculator, statesman, and presidential advisor. After his success in business, he devoted his time toward advising Democratic presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt on economic matters.

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• America has never forgotten — and never will forget — the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path — the path that was entered upon only one hundred and fifty years ago ... How young she is! It will be centuries before she will adopt that maturity of custom — the clothing of the grave — that some people believe she is already fitted for.
  • Address on accepting The Churchman Award, New York (23 May 1944)

• Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation ... Let us not deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.
  • Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (14 June 1946)

• 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.
  • Address to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (14 June 1946)

• Let us not be deceived — we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us.
  • Speech to the South Carolina Legislature, Columbia, SC (16 April 1947)
  • He said that the phrase "cold war" was suggested to him by H. B. Swope, editor of the New York World; the term had earlier been used by George Orwell (1945).

• Although the shooting war is over, we are in the midst of a cold war which is getting warmer.
  • Speech before the Senate’s Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program (1948)

• Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter.
  • Often quoted response to Igor Cassini, a popular society columnist for the New York Journal American, when asked how he handled the seating arrangements for all those who attended his dinner parties, as quoted in Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes Mostly Humorous (1948) by Bennett Cerf, p. 249; the full response was "I never bother about that. Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter." This anecdote is also quoted online at Chiasmus.com and has also become part of a larger expression, which has been commonly attributed to Dr. Seuss, even in print, but without citation of a specific work : "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

• There are no such things as incurable, there are only things for which man has not found a cure.
  • Speech (30 April 1954)

• To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
  • On his 85th birthday, as quoted in The Observer [London] (21 August 1955)

• I am quite sure that in the hereafter she will take me by the hand and lead me to my proper seat.
  • Regarding a childhood teacher, as quoted in News summaries (29 August 1955)

• 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.
  • As quoted in The New York Post (1 May 1959)

• Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
  • As quoted in Meyer Berger’s New York (1960)

• A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren’t still there, he’s no longer a political leader.
  • As quoted in his obituary, New York Times (21 June 1965)

• I'm not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the apple fall but Newton was the one who asked why.
  • New York Post (24 June 1965)

• Anyone taken as an individual is tolerably sensible...as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead (originally a quote from the poet Schiller, and quoted by Baruch in his Foreword to the 1932 version of "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay, LL.D. (originally published in 1841)).

Debated or Misattributed

• If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

  Also attributed to Abraham Maslow, Michael Polanyi. and Mark Twain; see Wiktionary page for details.

• When asked what the market would do, replied It will fluctuate

  Widely attributed to Baruch, this quote actually originated with J. P. Morgan.