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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.

-Warren Buffett

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Anyone Who Believes A

Warren Buffett

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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.

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If You Want A Government That's Going To Do The Things We Ask Our Government To Do, You've Got To Get It From Somebody.

The Stock Market Is A Wonderfully Efficient Mechanism For Transferring Wealth From The Impatient To The Patient.

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.

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

The Smarter The Journalists Are, The Better Off Society Is.

There Is Nothing Like Writing To Force You To Think And Get Your Thoughts Straight.

The Much-maligned Idle Rich Have Received A Bad Rap: They Have Maintained Their Wealth While Many There Is Scarcely An Instance Of A Man Who Has Made A Fortune By Speculation And Kept It. Andrew Carnegie Of The Energetic Rich, Aggressive Real Estate Operators, Corporate Acquirers, Oil Drillers, Etc. Have Their Fortunes Disappear.

If You Have A Great Manager, You Want To Pay Him Very Well.

The Greatest Investment A Young Person Can Make Is In Their Own Education, In Their Own Mind. Because Money Comes And Goes. Relationships Come And Go. But What You Learn Once Stays With You Forever.

Why Not Invest Your Assets In The Companies You Really Like? As Mae West Said, 'too Much Of A Good Thing Can Be Wonderful'.

At Berkshire, I Both Initiate And Monitor Every Derivatives Contract On Our Books ... If Berkshire Ever Gets In Trouble, It Will Be My Fault. It Will Not Be Because Of The Misjudgments Made By A Risk Committee Or Chief Risk Officer.

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.

You Pay A Very High Price In The Stock Market For A Cheery Consensus.

I Put Heavy Weight On Certainty. It's Not Risky To Buy Securities At A Fraction Of What They're Worth.

You Need A Lot Of Curiosity For A Long, Long Time.

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.

Cash, Though, Is To A Business As Oxygen Is To An Individual: Never Thought About When It Is Present, The Only Thing In Mind When It Is Absent... When Bills Come Due, Only Cash Is Legal Tender. Don't Leave Home Without It.

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

The Obligation Of A Society As Prosperous As Ours Is To Figure Out How Nobody Gets Left Too Far Behind.

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

Valuing A Business Is Part Art And Part Science.

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

Investing Money

Investment Success

I Think That Both Parties Should Declare The Debt Limit As A Political Weapon Of Mass Destruction Which Can't Be Used. I Mean, It Is Silly To Have A Country That Has 237 Years Building Up Its Reputation And Then Have People Threaten To Tear It Down Because They're Not Getting Some Other Matter.

There Is No Perfect Mathematical Formula For Pricing A Business.

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 Do Not Believe In Inheriting Your Position In Society Based On Which Womb You Come From... I Think A Rich Person Should Leave His Children Enough So They Can Do Anything, But Not Enough So They Can Do Nothing.

If You Can Tell Me Who Your Heroes Are, I Can Tell You How You're Going To Turn Out In Life.

You Don't Ever Ask A Barber Whether You Need A Haircut.

Never Do Anything In Life If You Would Be Ashamed Of Seeing It Printed On The Front Page Of Your Hometown Newspaper For Your Friends And Family To See.

Family And Friends

No Formula In Finance Tells You That The Moat Is 28 Feet Wide And 16 Feet Deep. That's What Drives The Academics Crazy. They Can Compute Standard Deviations And Betas, But They Can't Understand Moats.

Investment Ideas, Like Women Are Often More Exciting Than Punctual.

The [stock] Market,like The Lord, Helps Those Who Help Themselves. But, Unlike The Lord, The Market Does Not Forgive Those Who Know Not What They Do.

Money Will Not Change How Healthy You Are Or How Many People Love You.

Turnarounds Seldom Turn.

[w]e Think The Very Term 'value Investing' Is Redundant. What Is 'investing' If It Is Not The Act Of Seeking Value At Least Sufficient To Justify The Amount Paid? Consciously Paying More For A Stock Than Its Calculated Value -- In The Hope That It Can Soon Be Sold For A Still-higher Price -- Should Be Labeled Speculation (which Is Neither Illegal, Immoral Nor -- In Our View -- Financially Fattening).

Honesty Is A Very Expensive Gift, Don't Expect It From Cheap People.

You Could Be Somewhere Where The Mail Was Delayed Three Weeks And Do Just Fine Investing.

The Stockmarket Is A Semi-psychotic Creature Given To Extremes Of Elation And Despair.

Many Stock Options In The Corporate World Have Worked In Exactly That Fashion: They Have Gained In Value Simply Because Management Retained Earnings, Not Because It Did Well With The Capital In Its Hands.

Your Money Can Be Inflated Away But Your Knowledge And Talent Cannot.

There Are Three Important Principles To Graham's Approach. [the First Is To Look At Stocks As Fractional Shares Of A Business, Which] Gives You An Entirely Different View Than Most People Who Are In The Market. [the Second Principle Is The Margin-of-safety Concept, Which] Gives You The Competitive Advantage. [the Third Is Having A True Investor's Attitude Toward The Stock Market, Which] If You Have That Attitude, You Start Out Ahead Of 99 Percent Of All The People Who Are Operating In The Stock Market - It's An Enormous Advantage.

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

I Mean, If Pearl Harbor Came Along, You Could Have Said The Planning Was Wrong By The Military Ahead Of Time Or Maybe The Battleships Shouldn't Have All Been In The Harbor And All That Kind Of Thing.

An Argument Is Made That There Are Just Too Many Question Marks About The Near Future; Wouldn't It Be Better To Wait Until Things Clear Up A Bit? You Know The Prose: "maintain Buying Reserves Until Current Uncertainties Are Resolved," Etc. Before Reaching For That Crutch, Face Up To Two Unpleasant Facts: The Future Is Never Clear And You Pay A Very High Price For A Cheery Consensus. Uncertainty Actually Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long-term Values.

We Enjoy The Process Far More Than The Proceeds.

When Bills Come Due, Only Cash Is Legal Tender. Don't Leave Home Without It.

Our Approach Is Very Much Profiting From Lack Of Change Rather Than From Change.

Investing Money

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.

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We Always See Shifts In Employment. If You Think About It, If You Go Back To 1800, It Took 80 Percent Of The Labor Force To Produce Enough Food For The Country. Now It Takes Less Than 3 Percent. Well, The Truth Is That Market Systems Move People Around.

It Is Madness To Risk Losing What You Need In Pursuing What You Simply Desire.

The Dominant Factors Affecting Control Valuations Are Earning Power (past And Prospective) And Asset Values.

Let Blockheads Read What Blockheads Wrote.

Forecasts May Tell You A Great Deal About The Forecaster; They Tell You Nothing About The Future.

There's Always A Mismatch. I Mean, You Know, As The Economy Evolves, It Reallocates Resources. Now, The Real Problem, In My View, Is - This Has Been - The Prosperity Has Been Unbelievable For The Extremely Rich People. If You Go To 1982, When Forbes Put On Their First 400 List, Those People Had $93 Billion. They Now They Have $2.4 Trillion, 25 For One. That Is - This Has Been A Prosperity That's Been Disproportionately Rewarding To The People On Top.

I Mean The Truth Is, I've Never Had It So Good In Terms Of Taxes. I Am Paying The Lowest Tax Rate That I've Ever Paid In My Life.

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

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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.

The Only Question Is Whether You’re Going To Do It Today Or Tomorrow. If You Keep Saying You’re Going To Do It Tomorrow, You’ll Never Do It. You Have To Get On It Today.

I Am A Huge Bull On This Country. We Will Not Have A Double-dip Recession At All. I See Our Businesses Coming Back Almost Across The Board.

Double Standard

It's Just That I Landed Up In A Terrific Capitalist System. One That Pays People Who Allocate Capital Extraordinarily Well. Intrinsically, I'm Not Worth As Much As Somebody Who Invents Something That Could Improves People's Life, Or Health Or Whatever.

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

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.

... The Best Way To Own Common Stocks Is Through An Index Fund.

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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.

Too Often, A Vast Collection Of Possessions Ends Up Possessing Its Owner. The Asset I Most Value, Aside From Health, Is Interesting, Diverse, And Long-standing Friends.

Be Brave When Others Are Afraid, And Afraid When Others Are Brave.

Sound Investing Can Make You Very Wealthy If You're Not In Too Big A Hurry

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

I Would Say That An Rfc-like Thing Might Make Sense. I Probably Would Do It Myself. But I Don't Think Trying To Combine That With What's Going Through Now, I Think What Is Needed Now Is Liquidity.

I Have No Idea On Timing. It’s Easier To Tell What Will Happen Than When It Will Happen. I Would Say That What Is Going On In Terms Of Trade Policy Is Going To Have Very Important Consequences.

It's A Nightmare To Administer Some Of This Sort Of Thing, But I Want To Tell The Shareholders Of Berkshire, To The Percent We Own Marketable Securities Or Things For Which There Are Market, Even If Those Markets - I Want To Tell Them What It's All About.

My Father Was The Best Person I've Ever Known.

I've Seen More People Fail Because Of Liquor And Leverage -- Leverage Being Borrowed Money. You Really Don't Need Leverage In This World Much. If You're Smart, You're Going To Make A Lot Of Money Without Borrowing.

Investing Money

It Is Obvious That The Performance Of A Stock Last Year Or Last Month Is No Reason, Per Se, To Either Own It Or To Not Own It Now. It Is Obvious That An Inability To "get Even" In A Security That Has Declined Is Of No Importance. It Is Obvious That The Inner Warm Glow That Results From Having Held A Winner Last Year Is Of No Importance In Making A Decision As To Whether It Belongs In An Optimum Portfolio This Year.

The Difference Between Successful People And Really Successful People Is That Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

Knowing What To Leave Out Is Just As Important As Knowing What To Focus On.

While The Poor And Middle Class Fight For Us In Afghanistan, And While Most Americans Struggle To Make Ends Meet, We Mega-rich Continue To Get Our Extraordinary Tax Breaks.

Long Ago, Ben Graham Taught Me That "price Is What You Pay; Value Is What You Get." Whether We're Talking About Socks Or Stocks, I Like Buying Quality Merchandise When It Is Marked Down.

People Who Watch Their Weight, Golf Scores, And Fuel Bills Seem To Shun Quantitative Evaluation Of Their Investment Management Skills Although It Involves The Most Important Client In The World-themselves.

It's Never Paid To Bet Against America. We Come Through Things, But Its Not Always A Smooth Ride.

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

Truly Conservative Actions Arise From Intelligent Hypotheses, Correct Facts And Sound Reasoning.

My Favorite Time Frame For Holding A Stock Is Forever.

If You Are Not Willing To Own A Stock For 10 Years, Do Not Even Think About Owning It For 10 Minutes.

Outstanding Long-term Results Are Produced Primarily By Avoiding Dumb Decisions, Rather Than By Making Brilliant Ones.

The Truth Is, Everything That Has Happened In My Life... That I Thought Was A Crushing Event At The Time, Has Turned Out For The Better.

Diversification Is Protection Against Ignorance. It Makes Little Sense If You Know What You Are Doing.

We've Used Up A Lot Of Bullets. And We Talk About Stimulus. But The Truth Is, We're Running A Federal Deficit That's 9 Percent Of Gdp. That Is Stimulative As All Get Out. It's More Stimulative Than Any Policy We've Followed Since World War Ii.

As One Of My Older Friends Says, "nostalgia Just Isn't What It Used To Be." Let's Take A Stab At It, Anyway.

Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

Investment Success

Take The Job You Would Take If You Were Independently Wealthy. You're Going To Do Well At It.

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.

Do What You Would Do For Free, Having Passion For What You Do Is The Most Important Thing.

Passion For What You Do

I Lose Confidence In Other People, All Kinds Of Institutions.

Intensity Is The Price Of Excellence.

In One Way, I'm Sympathetic To The Institutional Reluctance To Face The Music. I'd Give A Lot To Mark My Weight To 'model' Rather Than To 'market.'

Charlie [munger] And I Are Not Big Fans Of Resumes. Instead, We Focus On Brains, Passion And Integrity.

Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You're Doing.

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.

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.

Our Future Rates Of Gain Will Fall Far Short Of Those Achieved In The Past. Berkshire's Capital Base Is Now Simply Too Large To Allow Us To Earn Truly Outsized Returns. If You Believe Otherwise, You Should Consider A Career In Sales But Avoid One In Mathematics.

Businesses Always Have Opportunities To Improve Service, Product Lines, Manufacturing Techniques, And The Like, And Obviously These Opportunities Should Be Seized. But A Business That Constantly Encounters Major Change Also Encounters Many Chances For Major Error

Stocks Are The Only Thing That People Are Happy To Buy When The Price Goes Up.

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

I Think It Will Get Moving Faster. I Mean Once You Get It Off The - Once Credit Flows - Now The Recession Is Going To Get Worse.

I Certainly Have No Desire To Sell A Good Controlled Business Run By People I Like And Admire, Merely To Obtain A Fancy Price. However, Specific Conditions May Cause The Sale Of One Operating Unit At Some Point.

Asking For Financial Advice From A Financial Planner Is Like Asking A Barber If You Need A Hair Cut.

Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

I'm Sitting With Six And A Half Billion Dollars We're Going To Use To Close The Mars-wrigley Deal On October 6. I've Got To Hand Over That Six And A Half Billion On October 6. Now, I Have To Be Very Careful About Who I Leave It In Between Now And Then, Because They're Expecting That He Show Up.

I View Derivatives As Time Bombs, Both For The Parties That Deal In Them And The Economic System.

The Single Most Important Decision In Evaluating A Business Is Pricing Power.

Take The High Road; It's Far Less Crowded.

Taking The High Road

Investing In A Market Where People Believe In Efficiency Is Like Playing Bridge With Someone Who Has Been Told It Doesn't Do Any Good To Look At The Cards.

The Best Business Returns Are Usually Achieved By Companies That Are Doing Something Quite Similar Today To What They Were Doing Five Or Ten Years Ago.

When Investing, Pessimism Is Your Friend, Euphoria The Enemy.

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

It Takes 150 Years To Build An Investment Bank And Only Five Minutes To Convince You To Sell Me Preferred Stock In It At A 10% Interest Rate.

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

But 300 Million Americans, Their Lending Institutions, Their Government, Their Media, All Believed That House Prices Were Going To Go Up Consistently. And That Got Billed Into A $20 Trillion Residential Home Market. Lending Was Done Based On It, And Everybody Did A Lot Of Foolish Things.

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.

It's Much Easier To Stay Out Of Trouble Now Than To Get Out Of Trouble Later.

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

The Speed At Which A Business Success Is Recognized, Furthermore, Is Not That Important As Long As The Company's Intrinsic Value Is Increasing At A Satisfactory Rate. In Fact, Delayed Recognition Can Be An Advantage: It May Give Us The Chance To Buy More Of A Good Thing At A Bargain Price.

Mark Zuckerberg Will Be A Hero To Many Young Entrepreneurs 20 Years From Now. Bill Gates Will Be A Hero To Others, And They Will Look To Those [people] Like I Read Books When I Was In My Teens About Rockefeller Or Carnegie.

Young Entrepreneurs

I Have This Complicated Procedure I Go Through Every Morning, Which Is To Look In The Mirror And Decide What I'm Going To Do. And I Feel At That Point, Everybody's Had Their Say.

In The World Of Business, The People Who Are Most Successful Are Those Who Are Doing What They Love.

Investment Success

If You Expect To Be A Net Saver During The Next 5 Years, Should You Hope For A Higher Or Lower Stock Market During That Period? Many Investors Get This One Wrong. Even Though They Are Going To Be Net Buyers Of Stocks For Many Years To Come, They Are Elated When Stock Prices Rise And Depressed When They Fall. This Reaction Makes No Sense. Only Those Who Will Be Sellers Of Equities In The Near Future Should Be Happy At Seeing Stocks Rise. Prospective Purchasers Should Much Prefer Sinking Prices.

Getting Fired Can Produce A Particularly Bountiful Payday For A Ceo. Indeed, He Can 'earn' More In That Single Day, While Cleaning Out His Desk, Than An American Worker Earns In A Lifetime Of Cleaning Toilets. Forget The Old Maxim About Nothing Succeeding Like Success: Today, In The Executive Suite, The All-too-prevalent Rule Is That Nothing Succeeds Like Failure.

We've Long Felt That The Only Value Of Stock Forecasters Is To Make Fortune Tellers Look Good. Even Now, Charlie And I Continue To Believe That Short-term Market Forecasts Are Poison And Should Be Kept Locked Up In A Safe Place, Away From Children And Also From Grown-ups Who Behave In The Market Like Children.

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

We Only Want To Link Up With People Whom We Like, Admire, And Trust. ... We Do Not Wish To Join With Managers Who Lack Admirable Qualities, No Matter How Attractive The Prospects Of Their Business. We've Never Succeeded In Making A Good Deal With A Bad Person.

Investors... Can't Pick Stocks That Are Better Than Average. Stocks Are A Good Thing To Own Over Time. There's Only Two Things You Can Do Wrong: You Can Buy The Wrong Ones, And You Can Buy Or Sell Them At The Wrong Time. And The Truth Is You Never Need To Sell Them.

You Have To Turn Over A Lot Of Rocks To Find Those Little Anomalies. You Have To Find The Companies That Are Off The Map - Way Off The Map. You May Find Local Companies That Have Nothing Wrong With Them At All. A Company That I Found, Western Insurance Securities, Was Trading For $3/share When It Was Earning $20/share!! I Tried To Buy Up As Much Of It As Possible. No One Will Tell You About These Businesses. You Have To Find Them.

If You Don't Make Mistakes You Can't Make Decisions.

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.

Failure Comes From Ego, Greed, Envy, Fear, Imitation. I Have Success Not Because I Am Smart, But Because I Am Rational.

If Past History Was All There Was To The Game, The Richest People Would Be Librarians.

It Makes No Difference To A Widow With Her Savings In A 5 Percent Passbook Account Whether She Pays 100 Percent Income Tax On Her Interest Income During A Period Of Zero Inflation Or Pays No Income Tax During Years Of 5 Percent Inflation. Either Way, She Is 'taxed' In A Manner That Leaves Her No Real Income Whatsoever. Any Money She Spends Comes Right Out Of Capital. She Would Find Outrageous A 100 Percent Income Tax But Doesn't Seem To Notice That 5 Percent Inflation Is The Economic Equivalent.

I Mean, In Terms Of Alternatives, Some People Have Suggested For Example That Why Don't We - Why Isn't America Doing What Berkshire Hathaway Is Doing? Why Isn't That A Better Deal For America?

There Is No Question That An Important Service Is Provided To Investors By Investment Companies, Investment Advisors, Trust Departments, Etc. This Service Revolves Around The Attainment Of Adequate Diversification, The Preservation Of A Long-term Outlook, The Ease Of Handling Investment Decisions And Mechanics, And Most Importantly, The Avoidance Of The Patently Inferior Investment Techniques Which Seem To Entice Some Individuals.

The Fundamental Basis Of Above-average Performance In The Long Run Is Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

Our Leaders Have Asked For “shared Sacrifice.” But When They Did The Asking, They Spared Me. I Checked With My Mega-rich Friends To Learn What Pain They Were Expecting. They, Too, Were Left Untouched.

If You Want To Soar Like An Eagle In Life, You Can't Be Flocking With The Turkeys.

I Don't Want To Give A Lecture To This Body That's Out There. You Know, I Mean, Having Had The Heart Attack, I Want To Get It Back Functioning. And As A Practical Matter, I Mean If You Were Bear Stearns, And You Were A Shareholder, You Know, You Lost 90 To 95 Percent Of Your Money. A Good Many Lost Their Jobs. They Lost Very Cushy Lives, Many Of Them.

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

Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

I Would Say It's More Important Who The Treasury Secretary Is Than Who The Vice President Is. If You Want To Have A Debate Here, I'd Like A Debate Between Potential Treasury Secretaries Than The Vice Presidential Debate.

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

In Business, I Look For Economic Castles Protected By Unbreachable 'moats'.

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

Don't Pass Up Something That's Attractive Today Because You Think You Will Find Something Way More Attractive Tomorrow.

We Have Long Felt That The Only Value Of Stock Forecasters Is To Make Fortune-tellers Look Good.

The Purpose Of Life Is To Be Loved By As Many People As Possible Among Those You Want To Have Love You

Wall Street Makes Its Money On Activity. You Make Your Money On Inactivity.

All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

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

As Of 1992, In Fact-though The Picture Would Have Improved Since Then-the Money That Had Been Made Since The Dawn Of Aviation By All Of This Country's Airline Companies Was Zero. Absolutely Zero.

Airline Business

By Periodically Investing In An Index Fund, The Know-nothing Investors Can Actually Outperform Most Investment Professionals.

The Advice "you Never Go Broke Taking A Profit" Is Foolish.

Opportunities Come Infrequently. When It Rains Gold, Put Out The Bucket, Not The Thimble.

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

Failing Conventionally Is The Route To Go; As A Group, Lemmings May Have A Rotten Image, But No Individual Lemming Has Ever Received Bad Press

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.

Aig Would Be Doing Fine Today. It Was One Of The Ten Largest Companies In The United States In Terms Of Market Value, Over 200 Billion, The Most Respected Insurer And Everything In The World.

The Key To Investing Is Not Assessing How Much An Industry Is Going To Affect Society, Or How Much It Will Grow, But Rather Determining The Competitive Advantage Of Any Given Company And, Above All, The Durability Of That Advantage.

It's Easier To Create Money Than To Spend It.

It Makes A Difference Who The Treasury Secretary Is.

Making A Difference

So If You Are Evaluating Others (or Yourself!) In The Investment Field, Think Out Some Standards - Apply Them - Interpret Them.

The American Worker Is More Productive Than He's Ever Been.

American Workers

You Should Invest In A Business That Even A Fool Can Run, Because Someday A Fool Will.

An Irresistable Footnote: In 1971, Pension Fund Managers Invested A Record 122% Of Net Funds Available In Equities - At Full Prices They Couldn't Buy Enough Of Them. In 1974, After The Bottom Had Fallen Out, They Committed A Then Record Low Of 21% To Stocks.

Bull Markets And Bear Markets Can Obscure Mathematical Laws, They Cannot Repeal Them.

The Best Investment You Can Make, Is An Investment In Yourself... The More You Learn, The More You'll Earn.

Best Investment

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

Paradoxically, When 'dumb' Money Acknowledges Its Limitations, It Ceases To Be Dumb.

Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

In The End, Alchemy, Whether It Is Metallurgical Or Financial, Fails. A Base Business Can Not Be Transformed Into A Golden Business By Tricks Of Accounting Or Capital Structure. The Man Claiming To Be A Financial Alchemist May Become Rich. But Gullible Investors Rather Than Business Achievements Will Usually Be The Source Of His Wealth.

I Want To Be Able To Explain My Mistakes. This Means I Do Only The Things I Completely Understand.

The Only Way To Be Loved Is To Be Loveable, Which Really Irritates Me.

A Pack Of Lemmings Looks Like A Group Of Rugged Individualists Compared With Wall Street When It Gets A Concept In Its Teeth.

The Best Thing I Did Was Choose The Right Heroes.

In The Long Run Managements Stressing Accounting Appearance Over Economic Substance Usually Achieve Little Of Either.

The Business Schools Reward Difficult Complex Behavior More Than Simple Behavior, But Simple Behavior Is More Effective.

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.

The Most Important Quality For An Investor Is Temperament, Not Intellect. You Need A Temperament That Neither Derives Great Pleasure From Being With The Crowd Or Against The Crowd.

Focus On Return On Equity, Not Earnings Per Share.

We Make Investment Decisions Based On Our Evaluation Of The Most Profitable Combination Of Probabilities.

In Earlier Years, A Lesser Effort Produced Literally Dozens Of Comparable Opportunities. It Is Difficult To Be Objective About The Causes For Such Diminution Of One's Own Productivity. Three Factors That Seem Apparent Are: (1) A Somewhat Changed Market Environment; (2) Our Increased Size; And (3) Substantially More Competition.

More Investment Sins Are Probably Committed By Otherwise Quite Intelligent People Because Of "tax Considerations" Than From Any Other Cause. One Of My Friends-a Noted West Coast Philosopher-maintains That A Majority Of Life's Errors Are Caused By Forgetting What One Is Really Trying To Do. This Is Certainly The Case When An Emotionally Supercharged Element Like Taxes Enters The Picture (i Have Another Friend-a Noted East Coast Philosopher Who Says It Isn't The Lack Of Representation He Minds-it's The Taxation).

Do Not Take Yearly Results Too Seriously. Instead, Focus On Four Or Five-year Averages.

The Greater The Potential For Reward In The Value Portfolio, The Less Risk There Is.

People Will Always Try To Stop You From Doing The Right Thing If It Is Unconventional.

Every Day That Goes By, I Mean, If You Don't React To Pearl Harbor For A Week Or Two Weeks Or Three Weeks, You're Behind In The War That You Otherwise Would Have Fought.

As Far As You Are Concerned, The Stock Market Does Not Exist. Ignore It.

The (stock) Market Is There Only As A Reference Point To See If Anybody Is Offering To Do Anything Foolish. When We Invest In Stocks, We Invest In Businesses.

I Mean, You May Be Very Mad At Some Guy That Walked Away With A Huge Golden Parachute, But That Really Isn't The Important Thing.

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

What's Hot Today Isn't Likely To Be Hot Tomorrow. The Stock Market Reverts To Fundamental Returns Over The Long Run. Don't Follow The Herd.

I Do Not Like Debt And Do Not Like To Invest In Companies That Have Too Much Debt, Particularly Long-term Debt. With Long-term Debt, Increases In Interest Rates Can Drastically Affect Company Profits And Make Future Cash Flows Less Predictable.

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