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And People Really Behaved In A Fraudulent Way Or Something, We'll Go Back And Find The Culprits Later On. But That Really Isn't The Problem We Have. I Mean That's Where It Came From, Though. We Leveraged Up And If You Have A 20 Percent Fall In Value Of A $20 Trillion Asset, That's $4 Trillion. And When $4 Trillion Lands - Losses Land In The Wrong Part Of This Economy, It Can Gum Up The Whole Place.

-Warren Buffett

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And People Really Behaved

Warren Buffett

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And People Really Behaved In A Fraudulent Way Or Something, We'll Go Back And Find The Culprits Later On. But That Really Isn't The Problem We Have. I Mean That's Where It Came From, Though. We Leveraged Up And If You Have A 20 Percent Fall In Value Of A $20 Trillion Asset, That's $4 Trillion. And When $4 Trillion Lands - Losses Land In The Wrong Part Of This Economy, It Can Gum Up The Whole Place.

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Occasionally, A Man Must Rise Above Principles.

There Is No Staff. I Make All The Investment Decisions And I Do All My Own Analysis.

If You Are A Professional And Have Confidence, Then I Would Advocate Lots Of Concentration.

Have Confidence

The Same Things Happen To Quite An Extent Around The Globe. I Mean, The European Banks Were Doing What The American Banks Were.

I'm Always Interested In Understanding The Math Of Things And Understanding As Much As I Can About All Aspects Of Business. And What I Learn Today May Be Useful To Me Two Years From Now. That's Really The Wonderful Thing About Investments Is Your Knowledge Is Cumulative.

Resolution Trust Company Was Set Up To Liquidate A Bunch Of Assets That The Government Had Inherited Because The Savings And Loans Went Broke.

Of Our 49 Billion, We Haven't Moved Any To Bitcoin

We All Make Mistakes. If You Can't Make Mistakes, You Can't Make Decisions. I've Made A Lot Bigger Mistakes Myself.

You Can Lose Leverage, And It's The Only Way A Smart Guy Can Go Broke.

Take The Probability Of Loss Times The Amount Of Possible Loss From The Probability Of Gain Times The Amount Of Possible Gain. That Is What We're Trying To Do. It's Imperfect, But That's What It's All About.

I Would Say The Biggest Single Cause Was We Had An Incredible Residential Real Estate Bubble.

Read 500 Pages Every Day. That's How Knowledge Works. It Builds Up Like Compound Interest.

People Went Crazy With Tulip Bulbs. They Went Crazy With The South Sea Bubble, They Went Crazy Internet Stocks, They Went Crazy With The Uranium Stocks Back When I Was First Getting Started.

Asset Values And Earning Power Are The Dominant Factors Affecting The Valuation Of A Controlling Interest In A Business. Market Price, Which Governs Valuation Of Minority Interest Positions, Is Of Little Or No Importance In Valuing A Controlling Interest.

The Rich Invest In Time, The Poor Invest In Money.

Words Of Wisdom

The Optimum Portfolio Depends On The Various Expectations Of Choices Available And The Degree Of Variance In Performance Which Is Tolerable. The Greater The Number Of Selections, The Less Will Be The Average Year-to-year Variation In Actual Versus Expected Results. Also, The Lower Will Be The Expected Results, Assuming Different Choices Have Different Expectations Of Performance.

I Think It's Been, You Know, Kind Of Like A Tragic Play To This Point. But At This Point, I Think It's Clear, And Will Be Clear To The Majority Of The Congress. I Think It's Clear To The American People That There Is Only One Countervailing Force To A World Where Financial Institutions Are Trying To Sell Instruments Every Day And Where Credit Has Dried Up, And That's The United States Treasury.

There Is Seldom Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen. You Know, You Turn On The Light And, All Of Sudden, They All Start Scurrying Around.

The Latter Qualification Brings To Mind A Fellow Who Applied For A Job And Stated He Had Twenty Years Of Experience-which Was Corrected By A Former Employer To Read "one Year's Experience-twenty Times.

You Do Not Adequately Protect Yourself By Being Half Awake When Other Are Sleeping.

I Never Try To Predict The Market.

In The 20th Century, The United States Endured Two World Wars And Other Traumatic And Expensive Military Conflicts; The Depression; A Dozen Or So Recessions And Financial Panics; Oil Shocks; A Flu Epidemic; And The Resignation Of A Disgraced President. Yet The Dow Rose From 66 To 11,497.

I'll Bring My Tax Returns; You Bring Yours. I'll Meet You Anytime Anywhere.

America Should Stand For More Than Just Wealth.

Investing Is The Greatest Business In The World Because You Never Have To Swing. You Stand At The Plate; The Pitcher Throws You General Motors At 47! U.s. Steel At 39! And Nobody Calls A Strike On You. There's No Penalty Except Opportunity. All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then, When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

When We Really Sit Back With A Smile On Our Face Is When We Run Into A Situation We Can Understand, Where The Facts Are Ascertainable And Clear, And The Course Of Action Obvious.

You Can't Buy What Is Popular And Do Well.

The Rich Are Always Going To Say That, You Know, Just Give Us More Money And We'll Go Out And Spend More And Then It Will All Trickle Down To The Rest Of You. But That Has Not Worked The Last 10 Years, And I Hope The American Public Is Catching On.

We Will Only Do With Your Money What We Would Do With Our Own.

The U.s. Treasury Has Got Borrowing Costs Like Nobody Else Has.

It's A Lot Easier To Buy Things Than It Is To Sell Them.

We Continue To Make More Money When Snoring Than When Active.

People Do, As Long As You Have Markets, You'll Have Excesses.

I'm Just Lucky To Have Been In The Right Place At The Right Time. Another Place, Another Time, I Wouldn't Have Been As Successful. Society Enabled Me To Make My Money And My Money Should Go To Society.

Everybody's Got A Different Circle Of Competence. The Important Thing Is Not How Big The Circle Is. The Important Thing Is Staying Inside The Circle.

The Capital Gains Tax Is 15 Percent Now. So I Sit There In My Office And I Make A Lot Of Money By Capital Gains, And I Pay 15 Percent, And I Pay No Payroll Tax On It.

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

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Investment Success

The Rest Of The World Really Likes Our Stuff Pretty Well. It's Just We Buy So Damn Much Of What They Produce.

In Investing, Just As In Baseball, To Put Runs On The Scoreboard, One Must Watch The Playing Field, Not The Scoreboard.

Uncertainty Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long Term Values.

The Best Way In My View Is To Just Buy A Low-cost Index Fund And Keep Buying It Regularly Over Time, Because You'll Be Buying Into A Wonderful Industry, Which In Effect Is All Of American Industry... People Ought To Sit Back And Relax And Keep Accumulating Over Time.

Managers And Investors Alike Must Understand That Accounting Numbers Are The Beginning, Not The End, Of Business Valuation.

If You're Extremely Rich, And You Have Got Children, My Theory Was, You Give Them Enough So They Can Do Anything, But Not Enough So They Can Do Nothing.

The Financial Calculus That Charlie And I Employ Would Never Permit Our Trading A Good Night's Sleep For A Shot At A Few Extra Percentage Points Of Return. I've Never Believed In Risking What My Friends And Family Have And Need In Order To Pursue What They Don't Have And Don't Need.

Only Buy Something That You'd Be Perfectly Happy To Hold If The Market Shut Down For 10 Years.

In Our View, Derivatives Are Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction Carrying Dangers That, While Latent, Are Potentially Lethal.

Mass Destruction

Mr. Market Is Your Servant, Not Your Guide.

It's Going To Be Tough Because The Economy Is Going To Be Getting Worse For A While. And It Might Fall Off A Cliff If This Doesn't Pass. But Nobody Will Ever Know That If It Does.

My Idea Of A Group Decision Is To Look In The Mirror.

Never Invest In A Business You Don't Understand.

Be Fearful When The Markets Get Greedy, Be Greedy When The Markets Get Fearful.

Economic Medicine That Was Previously Meted Out By The Cupful Has Recently Been Dispensed By The Barrel. These Once Unthinkable Dosages Will Almost Certainly Bring On Unwelcome After-effects. Their Precise Nature Is Anyone's Guess, Though One Likely Consequence Is An Onslaught Of Inflation.

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Never Count On Making A Good Sale. Have The Purchase Price Be So Attractive That Even A Mediocre Sale Gives Good Results.

You Know, With Your Money And My Brains, I Mean, There's No Telling How Far We'd Go.

We Have To Live With The Rest Of The World. And It's A Mistake, In My View. Trade Has Generally Developed In This Country. We Actually Export 12 Or 13 Percent Of Our Gdp. It Was Only 5 Percent In 1970. But It Benefits Us. It Benefits The Rest Of The World. It Doesn't Benefit The Steelworker Maybe In Ohio. And That's The Problem That Has To Be Addressed, Because When You Have Something That's Good For Society, But Terribly Harmful For Given Individuals, We Have Got To Make Sure Those Individuals Are Taken Care Of.

Basically, The Single-most Important Decision In Evaluating A Business Is Pricing Power.

Important Decisions

Nevertheless, As Circumstances Presently Appear, I Feel Substantially Greater Size Is More Likely To Harm Future Results Than To Help Them. This Might Not Be True For My Own Personal Results, But It Is Likely To Be True For Your Results.

The Range Of Derivatives Contracts Is Limited Only By The Imagination Of Man (or Sometimes, So It Seems, Madmen). Say You Want To Write A Contract Speculating On The Number Of Twins To Be Born In Nebraska In 2020. No Problem-at A Price, You Will Easily Find An Obliging Counterparty.

It Is Impossible To Unsign A Contract, So Do All Your Thinking Before You Sign.

Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses - How To Value A Business And How To Think About Market Prices

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I'm Happy When I Can Spend Every Day Doing The Things That I Like To Do. That's My Luxury.

Do Not Save What Is Left After Spending, But Spend What Is Left After Saving.

Well, I Think The Biggest Mistake Is Not Learning The Habits Of Saving Properly Early. Because Saving Is A Habit. And Then, Trying To Get Rich Quick. It's Pretty Easy To Get Well-to-do Slowly. But It's Not Easy To Get Rich Quick.

If You Own A Wonderful Business...the Best Thing To Do Is Keep It. All You're Going To Do Is Trade Your Wonderful Business For A Whole Bunch Of Cash, Which Isn't As Good As The Business, And You Got The Problem Of Investing In Other Businesses, And You Probably Paid A Tax In Between. So My Advice To Anybody Who Owns A Wonderful Business Is Keep It.

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Investors Should Be Skeptical Of History-based Models. Constructed By A Nerdy-sounding Priesthood Using Esoteric Terms Such As Beta, Gamma, Sigma And The Like, These Models Tend To Look Impressive. Too Often, Though, Investors Forget To Examine The Assumptions Behind The Models. Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

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Growth And Value Investing Are Joined At The Hip.

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We Like To Buy Businesses, But We Don't Like To Sell Them.

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Buy Into A Company Because You Want To Own It, Not Because You Want The Stock To Go Up.

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The Secret To Happiness Is Having Low Expectations.

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Invest In As Much Of Yourself As You Can, You Are Your Own Biggest Asset By Far.

Other Guys Read Playboy. I Read Annual Reports.

Games Are Won By Players Who Focus On The Playing Field -- Not By Those Whose Eyes Are Glued To The Scoreboard.

Never Test The Depth Of River With Both The Feet.

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I Don't Need 15 Houses. Owning Real Estate Doesn't Mean Much To Me. I Don't Like To Think About Things Like That. I Don't Need 12 Boats, Or Even The World's Largest Boat With A Crew Of 80. I'd Have To Take Care Of Them, To Worry About Them. I Get A Lot More Fun Out Of Life Without All The Bells And Whistles.

I Have Got This Letter Which Actually Goes Out The Day After I Die. It Has Already Been Written. And It Says That: "yesterday I Died". And Then It Says: "that's Bad News For Me, But It's Not Bad News For You, The Shareholders Of Berkshire". And Then I Go On And Explain What Is Going To Happen. I Know That Is One Time When They Will Be Really Interested In Hearing From Me.

Activity Is The Enemy Of Investment Returns.

Most Investors, Both Institutional And Individual, Will Find That The Best Way To Own Common Stocks (shares') Is Through An Index Fund That Charges Minimal Fees. Those Following This Path Are Sure To Beat The Net Results (after Fees And Expenses) Of The Great Majority Of Investment Professionals.

In A Difficult Business, No Sooner Is One Problem Solved Than Another Surfaces - Never Is There Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen.

Benign Neglect, Bordering On Sloth, Remains The Hallmark Of Our Investment Process.

We've Seen What Can Be Accomplished When We Use 50% Of Our Human Capacity. If You Visualize What 100% Can Do, You'll Join Me As An Unbridled Optimist About America's Future.

Ben's Mr. Market Allegory May Seem Out-of-date In Today's Investment World, In Which Most Professionals And Academicians Talk Of Efficient Markets, Dynamic Hedging And Betas. Their Interest In Such Matters Is Understandable, Since Techniques Shrouded In Mystery Clearly Have Value To The Purveyor Of Investment Advice. After All, What Witch Doctor Has Ever Achieved Fame And Fortune By Simply Advising 'take Two Aspirins'?

Turnarounds Seldom Turn.

And People Really Behaved In A Fraudulent Way Or Something, We'll Go Back And Find The Culprits Later On. But That Really Isn't The Problem We Have. I Mean That's Where It Came From, Though. We Leveraged Up And If You Have A 20 Percent Fall In Value Of A $20 Trillion Asset, That's $4 Trillion. And When $4 Trillion Lands - Losses Land In The Wrong Part Of This Economy, It Can Gum Up The Whole Place.

I Wouldn't Want To Manufacture Cigarettes. But If I Owned - We Do Own Costco. Do They Sell Them? Yes. So I Don't Have A Problem Owning Stock In That. But I Just Wouldn't Want To - I Wouldn't Want To Do It Myself. I Basically Think, If Anything Is Sufficiently Antisocial, Society Should Do Something About It. But That's A Separate Question. But - And I Don't Think There's Any Company That I Have Seen That's 100 Percent Pure.

The Fed Is The Greatest Hedge Fund In History.

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All I Have To Do Is Think And Not Be Influenced By Others.

In Some Corner Of The World They Are Probably Still Holding Regular Meetings Of The Flat Earth Society. We Derive No Comfort Because Important People, Vocal People, Or Great Numbers Of People Agree With Us. Nor Do We Derive Comfort If They Don't.

If You're In A Card Game And You Can't Figure Out Who The Patsy Is, You're It.

There Is No Substitute For A Local Newspaper That Is Doing Its Job.

My Favorite Time Frame For Holding A Stock Is Forever.

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

If You Expect To Continue To Purchase Stocks Throughout Your Life, You Should Welcome Price Declines As A Way To Add Stocks More Cheaply To Your Portfolio.

I'm Putting All My Money In The Chinese Toy Market.

A Public-opinion Poll Is No Substitute For Thought.

I Think People - What People Want To Do Is Make [economy] Get Worse.

I Checked The Actuarial Tables, And The Lowest Death Rate Is Among Six-year-olds. So I Decided To Eat Like A Six-year-old.

Our Policy Is To Concentrate Holdings. We Try To Avoid Buying A Little Of This Or That When We Are Only Lukewarm About The Business Or Its Price. When We Are Convinced As To Attractiveness, We Believe In Buying Worthwhile Amounts.

The First Rule Is Not To Lose. The Second Rule Is Not To Forget The First Rule.

Should You Find Yourself In A Chronically Leaking Boat, Energy Devoted To Changing Vessels Is Likely To Be More Productive Than Energy Devoted To Patching Leaks.

Investing Money

Investment Success

I Do Know That When I Am 60, I Should Be Attempting To Achieve Different Personal Goals Than Those Which Had Priority At Age 20.

If You Look At The Forbes 400, They Are Paying A Lower Rate, Accounting Payroll Taxes, Than Their Secretary Or - Whomever Around Their Office.

Chains Of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken.

It's Not Debt Per Say That Overwhelms An Individual Corporation Or Country. Rather It Is A Continuous Increase In Debt In Relation To Income That Causes Trouble.

We Don't Have To Be Smarter Than The Rest. We Have To Be More Disciplined Than The Rest.

Successful Investing

An Ipo Is Like A Negotiated Transaction - The Seller Chooses When To Come Public - And It's Unlikely To Be A Time That's Favourable To You.

I Get To Do What I Like To Do Every Single Day Of The Year.

When People Talk About Cash Being King, It's Not King If It Just Sits There And Never Does Anything.

When Berkshire Buys Common Stock, We Approach The Transaction As If We Were Buying Into A Private Business.

The Active Investors Will Have Their Returns Diminished By A Far Greater Percentage Than Will Their Inactive Brethren. That Means That The Passive Group - The "know-nothings" - Must Win.

If You Own The Only Newspaper In Town, Up Until The Last Five Years Or So, You Have Pricing Power And You Didn't Have To Go To The Office.

If You Don't Know Jewelry, Know The Jeweler.

We Don't Read Other People's Opinions. We Want To Get The Facts, And Then Think.

Never Depend On A Single Source Of Income.

You Don't Want 300 Million Americans Putting Their Money Under The Mattress.

Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

A Ceo's Behavior Has A Huge Impact On Managers Down The Line.

I Never Attempt To Make Money On The Stock Market. I Buy On The Assumption That They Could Close The Market The Next Day And Not Reopen It For Five Years.

Greatest Wealth

Is Management Candid With The Shareholders?

That Which Is Not Worth Doing At All Is Not Worth Doing Well.

Anyone Who Believes A Growth Rate In Excess Of 15% Per Annum Over The Long Term Is Attainable Should Pursue A Career In Sales, But Avoid One In Mathematics.

Anything Can Happen Anytime In Markets. And No Advisor, Economist, Or Tv Commentator-and Definitely Not Charlie Nor I-can Tell You When Chaos Will Occur. Market Forecasters Will Fill Your Ear But Will Never Fill Your Wallet.

For Example: (1) As If Governed By Newton's First Law Of Motion, An Institution Will Resist Any Change In Its Current Direction; (2) Just As Work Expands To Fill Available Time, Corporate Projects Or Acquisitions Will Materialize To Soak Up Available Funds; (3) Any Business Craving Of The Leader, However Foolish, Will Be Quickly Supported By Detailed Rate-of-return And Strategic Studies Prepared By His Troops; And (4) The Behavior Of Peer Companies, Whether They Are Expanding, Acquiring, Setting Executive Compensation Or Whatever, Will Be Mindlessly Imitated.

We Also Believe Candour Benefits Us As Managers. The Ceo Who Misleads Often In Public Eventually Misleads Himself In Private.

I've Learned Mainly By Reading Myself. So I Don't Think I Have Any Original Ideas. Certainly, I Talk About Reading Graham. I've Read Phil Fisher. So I've Gotten A Lot Of My Ideas From Reading. You Can Learn A Lot From Other People. In Fact, I Think If You Learn Basically From Other People, You Don't Have To Get Too Many New Ideas On Your Own. You Can Just Apply The Best Of What You See.

The Only Time To Buy These Is On A Day With No 'y' In It.

There Are Three Kinds Of People: 1. Innovators. 2. Imitators. 3. Idiots.

The Best Thing That Happens To Us Is When A Great Company Gets Into Temporary Trouble...we Want To Buy Them When They're On The Operating Table.

Investing Money

Much Success Can Be Attributed To Inactivity. Most Investors Cannot Resist The Temptation To Constantly Buy And Sell.

Whether We’re Talking About Socks Or Stocks, I Like Buying Quality Merchandise When It Is Marked Down.

Investing Money

Cultivate Curiosity And Strive To Become A Little Wiser Every Day.

The Line Separating Investment And Speculation, Which Is Never Bright And Clear, Becomes Blurred Still Further When Most Market Participants Have Recently Enjoyed Triumphs. Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money. After A Heady Experience Of That Kind, Normally Sensible People Drift Into Behavior Akin To That Of Cinderella At The Ball.

Investing Money

We Will Continue To Ignore Political And Economic Forecasts, Which Are An Expensive Distraction For Many Investors And Businessmen. Thirty Years Ago, No One Could Have Foreseen The Huge Expansion Of The Vietnam War, Wage And Price Controls, Two Oil Shocks, The Resignation Of A President, The Dissolution Of The Soviet Union, A One-day Drop In The Dow Of 508 Points, Or Treasury Bill Yields Fluctuating Between 2.8% And 17.4%.

Read Ben Graham And Phil Fisher Read Annual Reports, But Don't Do Equations With Greek Letters In Them.

It's Us Fun Being A Horse When The Tractor Comes Along, Or The Blacksmith When The Car Comes Along.

If You Hit A Hole In One Every Hole, You Wouldn’t Play Golf For Very Long.

It's Just That Right Now The Athlete's On The Floor. But We - This Is A Super Athlete.

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

Investing In Yourself Is The Best Thing You Can Do. If You've Got Talents, No One Can Take Them From You.

Look For 3 Things In A Person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If They Don't Have The Last One, Don't Even Bother With The First Two.

The Future Is Never Clear; You Pay A Very High Price In The Stock Market For A Cheery Consensus. Uncertainty Actually Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long-term Values.

I Have An 800 Freephone Number Now That I Call If I Get The Urge To Buy An Airline Stock. I Call At Two In The Morning And I Say: "my Name Is Warren And I'm An Aeroholic." And Then They Talk Me Down.

If You Want To Shoot Rare, Fast-moving Elephants, You Should Always Carry A Loaded Gun.

Government Can't Deliver A Free Lunch To The Country As A Whole. It Can, However, Determine Who Pays For Lunch. And Last Week The Senate Handed The Bill To The Wrong Party... The Poor And Middle Class.

Goldman Sachs Saying They Might Be Interested In Such An Investment. I'm Familiar With The Company. I've Known The Management, The Current Management, Jack Welch Before Jeff Immelt. I've Known Him For Decades.

What An Investor Needs Is The Ability To Correctly Evaluate Selected Businesses. Note That Word “selected”: You Don't Have To Be An Expert On Every Company, Or Even Many. You Only Have To Be Able To Evaluate Companies Within Your Circle Of Competence. The Size Of That Circle Is Not Very Important; Knowing Its Boundaries, However, Is Vital.

I Understand Goldman Sachs Businesses. We Do Lot Of Business With Him, And Ge Has Been - I Think It's The Longest Running Stock In The Dow Jones Industrial Average. It Will Be 100 Years Now It Will Be Around. I Hope I'm Around Then, Too. And It Was An Attractive Investment. And We Have Had A Lot Of Money Around, Over The Last Two Years, And We're Seeing Things That Are Attractive Now.

Charlie And I Decided Long Ago That In An Investment Lifetime, It's Too Hard To Make Hundreds Of Smart Decisions. That Judgment Became Ever More Compelling As Berkshire's Capital Mushroomed And The Universe Of Investments That Could Significantly Affect Our Results Shrank Dramatically. Therefore, We Adopted A Strategy That Required Our Being Smart And Not Too Smart At That, Only A Very Few Times. Indeed, We Now Settle For One Good Idea A Year.

There Seems To Be Some Perverse Human Characteristic That Likes To Make Easy Things Difficult.

All But A Few Of The Organizations Do Not Specifically Promise To Deliver Superior Investment Performance Although It Is Perhaps Not Unreasonable For The Public To Draw Such An Inference From Their Advertised Emphasis On Professional Management.

It Is Easier To Rationalize Than It Is To Be Rational.

I Am Not In The Business Of Predicting General Stock Market Of Business Fluctuations. If You Think I Can Do This, Or Think It Is Essential To An Investment Program, You Should Not Be In The Partnership.

Generally, We Have Translated Greater Output In The Few Hours Of Work Per Week Over The Last Century. And That's A Good Trend Of The Future. But We Do Have To Have A System That, As Output Of Goods And Services Keeps Increasing Per Capita, That It Takes Care Of The People Who Are Willing To Work And Really Are Not Getting By Very Well With A Family On A 40-hour Week.

Gold Is A Way Of Going Long On Fear, And It Has Been A Pretty Good Way Of Going Long On Fear From Time To Time. But You Really Have To Hope People Become More Afraid In A Year Or Two Years Than They Are Now. And If They Become More Afraid You Make Money, If They Become Less Afraid You Lose Money, But The Gold Itself Doesn’t Produce Anything.

I Think That Actually People In My Situation Should Be Paying More Tax.

The Key To Success Is Emotional Stability.

Like Most Trends, At The Beginning It's Driven By Fundamentals, At Some Point Speculation Takes Over. What The Wise Man Does In The Beginning, The Fool Does In The End.

Unless Your Answers Are Clearly Better, Copy The Answers Of Your Betters.

When Somebody Makes It Very Easy For You To Do It By Saying You Don't Really Have To Put Up My Money, You Can Lie About Your Income A Little, Or We'll Give You 100 Percent Mortgage, You're Going To Do It, Because Everybody That's Done It Has Been Proven Right. You Have Social Tools, And You're Going To Feel Like An Idiot If You Didn't Do It, Because The House Cost More.

One Of The Ironies Of The Stock Market Is The Emphasis On Activity. Brokers, Using Terms Such As 'marketability' And 'liquidity,' Sing The Praises Of Companies With High Share Turnover... But Investors Should Understand That What Is Good For The Croupier Is Not Good For The Customer. A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pick Pocket Of Enterprise.

In That, We Agreed With Andrew Carnegie, Who Said That Huge Fortunes That Flow In Large Part From Society Should In Large Part Be Returned To Society. In My Case, The Ability To Allocate Capital Would Have Had Little Utility Unless I Lived In A Rich, Populous Country In Which Enormous Quantities Of Marketable Securities Were Traded And Were Sometimes Ridiculously Mispriced. And Fortunately For Me, That Describes The U.s. In The Second Half Of The Last Century.

Enormous Quantities

A Single Year's Performance Is Of Minor Importance And, Good Or Bad, Should Never Be Taken Seriously.

Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

Investment Success

I Asked Him What He Wanted To Do For His Career, And He Replied That He Wanted To Go Into A Particular Field, But Thought He Should Work For Mckinsey For A Few Years First To Add To His Resume. To Me That's Like Saving Sex For Your Old Age. It Makes No Sense.

After 25 Years Of Buying And Supervising A Great Variety Of Businesses, Charlie [munger] And I Have Not Learned How To Solve Difficult Business Problems. What We Have Learned Is To Avoid Them. To The Extent We Have Been Successful, It Is Because We Have Concentrated On Identifying One-foot Hurdles That We Could Step Over Rather Than Because We Acquired Any Ability To Clear Seven-footers.

I Mean [franklin Delano] Roosevelt Didn't - You Know, When He Came In, He Didn't Print Any Money.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

If You Owe Money, You Can't Pay Them Out. You Just Pay For Everything, You Do Smart Things, You Eventually Get Very Rich.

Wall Street Is The Only Place That People Ride To In A Rolls Royce To Get Advice From Those Who Take The Subway.

Investing Money

Part Of Making Good Decisions In Business Is Recognizing The Poor Decisions You've Made And Why They Were Poor. I've Made Lots Of Mistakes. I'm Going To Make More. It's The Name Of The Game. You Don't Want To Expect Perfection In Yourself. You Want To Strive To Do Your Best. It's Too Demanding To Expect Perfection In Yourself.

Earnings Can Be Pliable As Putty When A Charlatan Heads The Company Reporting Them.

Never Be Afraid To Ask For Too Much When Selling Or Offer Too Little When Buying.

One’s Objective Should Be To Get It Right, Get It Quick, Get It Out And Get It Over. Your Problem Won’t Improve With Age.

You Get In A Lot Of Trouble When You Start Putting Fictitious Numbers.

I’ve Worked In An Economy That Rewards Someone Who Saves The Lives Of Others On A Battlefield With A Medal, Rewards A Great Teacher With Thank-you Notes From Parents, But Rewards Those Who Can Detect The Mispricing Of Securities With Sums Reaching Into The Billions.

My Friends And I Have Been Coddled Long Enough By A Billionaire-friendly Congress.

Investment Philosophy Is The Clear Understanding That By Owning Shares Of Stocks He Owns Businesses, Not Pieces Of Paper.

Fund Consultants Like To Require Style Boxes Such As "long-short," "macro," "international Equities." At Berkshire Our Only Style Box Is "smart."

In An Inflationary World, A Toll Bridge (like Company) Would Be A Great Thing To Own Because You've Laid Out The Capital Costs. You Built It In Old Dollars And You Don't Have To Keep Replacing It.

The Ability To Say No Is A Tremendous Advantage For An Investor.

The Value Of A Business Is The Cash It's Going To Produce In The Future.

When You Listen To Tax-cut Rhetoric, Remember That Giving One Class Of Taxpayer A Break Requires - Now Or Down The Line - That An Equivalent Burden Be Imposed On Other Parties. In Other Words, If I Get A Break, Someone Else Pays. Government Can't Deliver A Free Lunch To The Country As A Whole. It Can However, Determine Who Pays For Lunch.

Investing Is Not As Tough As Being A Top-notch Bridge Player. All It Takes Is The Ability To See Things As They Really Are.

If You're An Investor, You're Looking On What The Asset Is Going To Do, If You're A Speculator, You're Commonly Focusing On What The Price Of The Object Is Going To Do, And That's Not Our Game.

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Lascelles Abercrombie

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