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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.

-Warren Buffett

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Getting Fired Can Produce

Warren Buffett

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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.

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If You Invested In A Very Low Cost Index Fund - Where You Don't Put The Money In At One Time, But Average In Over 10 Years -you'll Do Better Than 90% Of People Who Start Investing At The Same Time.

Would Your Reply Possibly Be This? Well, It All Depends On What My Tax Rate Will Be On The Gain You're Saying We're Going To Make. If The Taxes Are Too High, I Would Rather Leave The Money In My Savings Account, Earning A Quarter Of 1 Percent. Only In Grover Norquist's Imagination Does Such A Response Exist.

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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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.

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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.

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

If This Is A War, My Side Has The Nuclear Bomb. We Have K Street. We Have Wall Street. Debbie Doesn't Have Anybody. I Want A Government That Is Responsive To The People Who Got The Short Straw In Life.

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Investing Money

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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.

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Let Blockheads Read What Blockheads Wrote.

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Investing Money

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

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A Pin Lies In Wait For Every Bubble And When The Two Eventually Meet, A New Wave Of Investors Learns Some Very Old Lessons.

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Bad Terminology Is The Enemy Of Good Thinking.

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Do What You Love And Work For Whom You Admire The Most, And You've Given Yourself The Best Chance In Life You Can.

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

Successful Investing Takes Time, Discipline And Patience. No Matter How Great The Talent Or Effort, Some Things Just Take Time: You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.

Investing Money

What Motivates Most Gold Purchasers Is Their Belief That The Ranks Of The Fearful Will Grow. During The Past Decade That Belief Has Proved Correct. Beyond That, The Rising Price Has On Its Own Generated Additional Buying Enthusiasm, Attracting Purchasers Who See The Rise As Validating An Investment Thesis. As 'bandwagon' Investors Join Any Party, They Create Their Own Truth - For A While.

A Fool And His Money Are Soon Invited Everywhere.

We're Perfectly Willing To Trade Away A Big Payoff For A Certain Payoff.

Things You Like To Do Should Be A Hobby Of Yours, But Things The World Does Should Be A Business Of Yours.

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've Already Written A Section In The Annual Report For Next Year Explaining Why I Think In One Case That The Figures On Our Balance Sheet As Calculated Are Wrong. But It's The Standard Way Of Doing It. It's Holy Writ. The Sec Wants Us To Do It That Way, And We'll Do It That Way, And I'll Explain Why I Think It's Wrong And Shareholders Can Read It And See Whether They Agree With My Logic Or Don't.

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

My Net Worth Is The Market Value Of Holdings Less The Tax Payable Upon Sale. The Liability Is Just As Real As The Asset Unless The Value Of The Asset Declines (ouch), The Asset Is Given Away (no Comment), Or I Die With It. The Latter Course Of Action Would Appear To At Least Border On A Pyrrhic Victory.

I Think The Congress Will Do The Right Thing. I Think That They've - You Know, They Got Into Certain Arguments And They Start Worrying About Assessing Blame, And There Is A Little Demagoguery, But In The End, Something This Important, They'll Do The Right Thing. So This Really Is An Economic Pearl Harbor. That Sounds Melodramatic, But I've Never Used That Phrase Before. And This Really Is One.

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

We've Got All The Ingredients For A Sensational Future.

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

American Workers

If We Have A Strength, It Is In Recognizing When We Are Operating Well Within Our Circle Of Competence And When We Are Approaching The Perimeter.

A Company Should Be Viewed As An Unfolding Movie, Not As A Still Photograph

Taking Jobs To Build Up Your Resume Is The Same As Saving Up Sex For Old Age.

The Truth Is That I've Got All My Net Worth Safely In Berkshire And I Will Never Sell A Share So There Is No One More Concerned About What Happens After My Death Than I Am.

The Typical Large Company Has A Compensation Committee, They Don't Look For Dobermans On That Committee, They Look For Chihuahuas.

I Find That The Standard Of Living Does Not Go Up In Proportion With The Cost Of Living. The Trick In Life Is To Do Things That Are Fun All The Time.

That's Been Lost. It's A Huge Problem. What You Have Is You Have The Major Institutions Of The World All Wanting To Deleverage. They Want To Take Down Their Assets And Liabilities. What Seemed So Easy To Borrow Against A Year Ago Now Looks Like Rat Poison To Them. So They're Trying To Deleverage. There Is Only One Institution In The World That Can Leverage Up In A Way That's All A Countervailing Force To That, And That's The United States Treasury.

It Takes 20 Years To Build A Reputation And Five Minutes To Ruin It. If You Think About That, You'll Do Things Differently.

The Noah Rule: Predicting Rain Doesn't Count; Building Arks Does.

It Will Be Good For Us In The Long Run, And I Mean There Are, You Know, Six And A Half Billion People In This World. And It's Great For 300 Million To Keep Enjoying More And More Property, But I Think It's Terrific If, You Know, The Remainder Do.

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Mr. Market Is Kind Of A Drunken Psycho. Some Days He Gets Very Enthused, Some Days He Gets Very Depressed. And When He Get Really Enthused You Sell To Him, And If He Gets Depressed, You Buy From Him. There's No Moral Taint Attached To That.

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.

I Read Annual Reports Of The Company I'm Looking At And I Read The Annual Reports Of The Competitors - That Is The Main Source Of Material.

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

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.

It's Almost Impossible To Overpay The Truly Extraordinary Ceo... But The Species Is Rare.

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

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

In The Business World, The Rearview Mirror Is Always Clearer Than The Windshield.

I Look At Everything. That's My Job. I Really Do, Every Day. I Think About Everything.

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

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

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I Don't Like What's Going On With The Executive Compensation.

Executive Compensation

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies. And If They Insist On Trying To Time Their Participation In Equities, They Should Try To Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy And Greedy Only When Others Are Fearful.

Investing Money

You Are Lucky In Life If You Have The Right Heroes. I Advise All Of You, To The Extent You Can, To Pick Out A Few Heroes

You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.

Investing Money

When I Take A Look At A Company's Annual Report, If I Don't Understand It, They Don't Want Me To Understand It.

They [goverment] Take From The Woman Who Comes In And Takes The Wastebaskets Out.

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.

I Look For Businesses In Which I Think I Can Predict What They're Going To Look Like In Ten To Fifteen Years Time. Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

The Important Thing Is To Keep Playing, To Play Against Weak Opponents And To Play For Big Stakes.

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.

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

So Smile When You Read A Headline That Says "investors Lose As Market Falls." Edit It In Your Mind To "disinvestors Lose As Market Falls-but Investors Gain." Though Writers Often Forget This Truism, There Is A Buyer For Every Seller And What Hurts One Necessarily Helps The Other. (as They Say In Golf Matches: "every Putt Makes Someone Happy.")

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.

Of The Billionaires I Have Known, Money Just Brings Out The Basic Traits In Them. If They Were Jerks Before They Had Money, They Are Simply Jerks With A Billion Dollars.

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

Never Test The Depth Of River With Both The Feet.

One Observer Commenting On Security Analysts Over Forty Stated: "they Know Too Many Things That Are No Longer True." As Long As I Am "on Stage", Publishing A Regular Record And Assuming Responsibility For Management Of What Amounts To Virtually 100% Of The Net Worth Of Many Partners, I Will Never Be Able To Put Sustained Effort Into Any Non-bpl Activity. If I Am Going To Participate Publicly. I Can't Help Being Competitive. I Know I Don't Want To Be Totally Occupied With Out-pacing An Investment Rabbit All My Life. The Only Way To Slow Down Is To Stop.

Inflation Could Be A Very - Is A Likely Consequence Out Of What's Going On Now.

Continually Challenge And Be Willing To Amend Your Best Loved Ideas.

I've Argued With The Senators And Congressmen I've Talked To. You Don't Want To Be Too Little Too Late. If You Buy Them At The Right Price, You May Be Buying Two Trillion Of Face Value.

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure Understated.

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

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.

Investors Have To Remember: Corporate Profits Are Going Up, But Stocks Are Going Up Faster. How Can That Continue Indefinitely? Investors Can Only Earn What Companies Themselves Can Earn; The Government Or The Markets Themselves Don't Kick Anything In. How Can You Get Anything More Out Of A Farm Than What It Grows?

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

It Is To Our Advantage To Have Securities Do Nothing Price-wise For Months, Or Perhaps Years, While We Are Buying Them.

[economy] Is Flat On The Floor, And The Paramedics Have Arrived. And They Shouldn't Argue About Whether They Put The Resuscitation Equipment A Quarter Of An Inch This Way Or A Quarter Of An Inch This Way, Or They Shouldn't Start Criticizing The Patient, Because He Didn't Have A Blood Pressure Test Or Something Like That. They Should Do What's Needed Right Now.

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

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

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

Focus On Your Customers And Lead Your People As Though Their Lives Depend On Your Success.

I Mean, We'll Be Pounding On The Guy's Chest, You Know, On The Floor, And You Know, He's Not Going To Just Jump Up All Of A Sudden. So It Makes It Tough. I Mean, It's Tough To Be In The Legislature, You Know, And Vote For Something And Then People Say, Well, You Voted All This Money And You Know, It's All Getting Spent. It Isn't Getting Spent. It's Getting Invested. But It's All Getting Spent. Nothing's Happening.

I Tell College Students, When You Get To Be My Age You Will Be Successful If The People Who You Hope To Have Love You, Do Love You.

The Big Question About How People Behave Is Whether They've Got An Inner Scorecard Or An Outer Scorecard. It Helps If You Can Be Satisfied With An Inner Scorecard.

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

The Extraordinary Business Does Not Require Good Management.

What The Human Being Is Best At Doing Is Interpreting All New Information So That Their Prior Conclusions Remain Intact.

Wide Diversification Is Only Required When Investors Do Not Understand What They Are Doing.

With Each Investment You Make, You Should Have The Courage And The Conviction To Place At Least Ten Per Cent Of Your Net Worth In That Stock

There Are 309 Million People Out There That Are Trying To Improve Their Lot In Life. And We've Got A System That Allows Them To Do It.

In Economics, You Always Want To Ask 'and Then What?'

When You Build A Bridge, You Insist That It Can Carry 30,000 Pounds, But You Only Drive 10,000-pound Trucks Across It. And That Same Principle Works In Investing.

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