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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.

-Warren Buffett

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I Certainly Have No

Warren Buffett

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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.

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In Our View, Though, Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses-how To Value A Business, And How To Think About Market Prices. Your Goal As An Investor Should Simply Be To Purchase, At A Rational Price, A Part Interest In An Easily-understandable Business Who's Earnings Are Virtually Certain To Be Materially Higher Five, Ten And Twenty Years From Now.

If Aig Had Tried To Unwind Their Derivatives Books. I Don't Know. It Would Have Hit Every Institution In The World.

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

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

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

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

America Should Stand For More Than Just Wealth.

It's Very Important That The Determination Of The Us Congress To Do What Is Is Needed Be Made Evident This Week And By The Actions Of Most Of The Members. I Mean, You're Not Going To Get Total Assent.

But, Surprise - None Of These Blockbuster Events Made The Slightest Dent In Ben Graham's Investment Principles. Nor Did They Render Unsound The Negotiated Purchases Of Fine Businesses At Sensible Prices. Imagine The Cost To Us, Then, If We Had Let A Fear Of Unknowns Cause Us To Defer Or Alter The Deployment Of Capital. Indeed, We Have Usually Made Our Best Purchases When Apprehensions About Some Macro Event Were At A Peak. Fear Is The Foe Of The Faddist, But The Friend Of The Fundamentalist.

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.

Banking Is Very Good Business If You Don't Do Anything Dumb.

When Forced To Choose, I Will Not Trade Even A Night's Sleep For The Chance Of Extra Profits.

So Some Guy May Know How To Make Money In Cocoa Beans, But I Don't So I Just Let Him Have That. But It's Got To Be Something I Understand. It's Got To Be A Business With Fundamentally Good Economics. It's Got To Be A Management That I Like And Trust And Admire. And It's Got To Be A Price That Makes Sense.

The Wise Man Once Said Invest Young

[people] Have Seen The Credit Market Seize Up. They're Worried About Money Market Funds, Although The Latest Proposition From Government Should Take Care Of That. They've Seen Eight Percent Of The Bank Deposits In The United States Get Moved Very Skillfully, I Might Say, Within The Last Couple Of Weeks From Institutions That They Thought Were Fine A Few Months Ago To Other Institutions. They Are Not Wrong To Be Worried.

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

We Still Find Very Few [stocks] That Even Mildly Interest Us. That Dismal Fact Is Testimony To The Insanity Of Valuations Reached During The Great Bubble. Unfortunately, The Hangover May Prove To Be Proportional To The Binge.

Observing That The Market Was Frequently Efficient, Emt Adherents Went On To Conclude Incorrectly That It Was Always Efficient. The Difference Between These Propositions Is Night And Day.

If You Understood A Business Perfectly And The Future Of The Business, You Need Very Little In The Way Of A Margin Of Safety.

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.

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

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.

We Always Live In An Uncertain World. What Is Certain Is That The United States Will Go Forward Over Time.

We Are In Effect Making A - To Some Extent, Making A Choice Between Future Inflation And Getting Our - Getting Off The Floor. And We're Likely - We're Likely To Have More Inflation In The Future As A Consequence Of The Things We Do To Fight The Present Situation.

It Makes A Difference Who The Treasury Secretary Is.

Making A Difference

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

What We Learn From History Is That People Don't Learn From History.

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

Mass Destruction

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

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

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

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

If You Can Eliminate The Government As A 39.6% Partner, Then You Will Be Much Better Off.

[the U.s. Treasury] Can Borrow Basically Unlimited Amounts. They Can Stay There For Years And Years. These Assets Will Be Worth More Money Over Time. So When Merrill Lynch Sells A Bunch Of Mortgage-related Assets At 22 Cents On The Dollar Like They Did A Month Or So Ago, The Buyer Goes - Is Going To Make Money, And He's Going To Make A Lot More Money If It Happens To Be An Institution Like The U.s. Government Which Has Very, Very Cheap Borrowing Costs.

Risk Can Be Greatly Reduced By Concentrating On Only A Few Holdings.

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

I Believe The Chance Of Any Event Causing Berkshire To Experience Financial Problems Is Essentially Zero. We Will Always Be Prepared For The Thousand-year Flood; In Fact, If It Occurswe Will Be Selling Life Jackets To The Unprepared.

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

Credit Worthiness Is Like Virginity, It Can Be Preserved But Not Restored Very Easily, So It Is Crazy To Play Around With It.

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

Accounting Consequences Do Not Influence Our Operating Or Capital-allocation Decisions. When Acquisition Costs Are Similar, We Much Prefer To Purchase $2 Of Earnings That Is Not Reportable By Us Under Standard Accounting Principles Than To Purchase $1 Of Earnings That Is Reportable.

... It's Important To Have The Right Monetary Policy. It's Important For, To Have The Right Fiscal Policy. But It's Nowhere Near As Important As Just The Normal Regenerative Capacity Of American Capitalism.

We've Had Public Companies In The Past In That Business And They Bleed. We've Got A Lot More Blood Than They Do.

What's Going To Happen - Things We're Doing Are Going To Have Some Inflationary Consequences.

[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'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.

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.

The Best Thing I Did Was Choose The Right Heroes.

People Always Ask Me Where They Should Go To Work, And I Always Tell Them To Go To Work For Whom They Admire The Most.

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

Active Management

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.

If You Don't Feel Comfortable Owning Something For 10 Years, Then Don't Own It For 10 Minutes.

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

Learning How To Live Is Much More Important Than Learning How To Make A Living.

Inspirational Life

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

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

You’ve Gotta Keep Control Of Your Time, And You Can’t Unless You Say No. You Can’t Let People Set Your Agenda In Life.

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

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.

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

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

I Think Confidence Will Come Back.

If Some Institution Wants To Sell You A Billion Dollars Worth Of Mortgages, They Might Have To Sell 100 Million In The Market, And Then You'll Buy The Other 900 Million On The Same Terms. Now, The Very Fact That This Has Been Authorized Or Will Be Authorized, I Hope, Will Firm Up The Market To Some Degree. And That's Fine. But You Don't Want To Have Artificial Prices Being Paid.

Knowing The Edge Of Your Competency Is Important. If You Think You Know More Than You Do, You Will Get In Trouble.

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

I Did Not Think I Would See The Day When, You Know, An Aig Would Not Be Able To Have Its Checks Clear.

I'm Not Worried They're All About The Investments We Make. I Mean, Listen, This Country - We've Got $46,000 Or $47,000 Of Gdp Per Capita. Now, We've Done Pretty Darn Well. We'll Do Better In The Future.

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

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.

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

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

Money Is Not Everything. Make Sure You Earn A Lot Before Speaking Such Nonsense.

Good Profits Simply Are Not Inconsistent With Good Behavior.

The Woman That Comes In, Takes The Wastebasket Away, She's Paying 15.3 Or Whatever It Is On Payroll Tax Alone. I Mean It Is - I Never Had It So Good.

If You Gave Me $100 Billion And Said Take Away The Soft Drink Leadership Of Coca-cola In The World, I'd Give It Back To You And Say It Can't Be Done.

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

Have Confidence

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.

The Most Important Quality For An Investor Is Temperament, Not Intellect.

Asset-heavy Businesses Generally Earn Low Rates Of Return - Rates That Often Barely Provide Enough Capital To Fund The Inflationary Needs Of The Existing Business, With Nothing Left Over For Real Growth, For Distribution To Owners, Or For Acquisition Of New Businesses

I Mean, You Know, You're Not Going To Change The Human Animal. And The Human Animal Really Doesn't Get A Lot Smarter.

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

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

Investing Money

Investment Success

The Smartest Side To Take In A Bidding War Is The Losing Side.

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

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.

We Try To Exert A Ted Williams Kind Of Discipline. In His Book The Science Of Hitting, Ted Explains That He Carved The Strike Zone Into 77 Cells, Each The Size Of A Baseball. Swinging Only At Balls In His "best" Cell, He Knew, Would Allow Him To Bat .400; Reaching For Balls In His "worst" Spot, The Low Outside Corner Of The Strike Zone, Would Reduce Him To .230. In Other Words, Waiting For The Fat Pitch Would Mean A Trip To The Hall Of Fame; Swinging Indiscriminately Would Mean A Ticket To The Minors.

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.

We've Got More Productive Capacity Now Than We Ever Have.

Rule No.1: Never Lose Money. Rule No.2: Never Forget Rule No.1.

If The World Couldn't See Your Results, Would You Rather Be Thought Of As The World's Greatest Investor But In Reality Have The World's Worst Record? Or Be Thought Of As The World's Worst Investor When You Were Actually The Best?

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.

First, Many In Wall Street - A Community In Which Quality Control Is Not Prized - Will Sell Investors Anything They Will Buy.

A Contrarian Approach Is Just As Foolish As A Follow-the-crowd Strategy. What's Required Is Thinking Rather Than Polling.

I Don't Have My Diploma From The University Of Nebraska Hanging On My Office Wall, And I Don't Have My Diploma From Columbia Up There Either-but I Do Have My Dale Carnegie Graduation Certificate Proudly Displayed.

Generally Speaking, Investing In Yourself Is The Best Thing You Can Do. Anything That Improves Your Own Talents; Nobody Can Tax It Or Take It Away From You. They Can Run Up Huge Deficits And The Dollar Can Become Worth Far Less. You Can Have All Kinds Of Things Happen. But If You’ve Got Talent Yourself, And You’ve Maximized Your Talent, You’ve Got A Tremendous Asset That Can Return Ten-fold.

I Like To Go For Cinches. I Like To Shoot Fish In A Barrel. But I Like To Do It After The Water Has Run Out.

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.

I Can't Promise Results, But I Can Promise A Common Destiny.

We Try To Buy Businesses With Good-to-superb Underlying Economics Run By Honest And Able People And Buy Them At Sensible Prices. That's All I'm Trying To Do.

I Don't Read Economic Forecasts. I Don't Read The Funny Papers.

If You Don’t Feel Comfortable Making A Rough Estimate Of The Asset’s Future Earnings, Just Forget It And Move On. No One Has The Ability To Evaluate Every Investment Possibility. But Omniscience Isn’t Necessary; You Only Need To Understand The Actions You Undertake.

If You Have A Harem Of 40 Women, You Never Get To Know Any Of Them Very Well.

A Lot Of People Disagree With Me On This, I Believe In Mark To Market.

The Reaction Of Weak Management To Weak Operations Is Often Weak Accounting.

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.

Cash Combined With Courage In A Time Of Crisis Is Priceless.

We're Still In A Recession. We're Not Gonna Be Out Of It For A While, But We Will Get Out.

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 Really Like My Life. I've Arranged My Life So That I Can Do What I Want.

I'll Tell You Why I Like The Cigarette Business. It Cost A Penny To Make. Sell It For A Dollar. It's Addictive. And There's A Fantastic Brand Loyalty.

We're Paying Maybe 25 Percent Of The Income Tax, But The Payroll Tax Is Over A Third Of The Receipts Of The Federal Government. And They Don't Take That From Me On Capital Gains. They Don't Take That From Me On Dividends.

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.

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

If Anything, Taxes For The Lower And Middle Class And Maybe Even The Upper-middle Class Should Even Probably Be Cut Further. But I Think That People At The High End - People Like Myself - Should Be Paying A Lot More In Taxes. We Have It Better Than We've Ever Had It.

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

It's Easy To Identify Many Investment Managers With Great Recent Records. But Past Results, Though Important, Do Not Suffice When Prospective Performance Is Being Judged. How The Record Has Been Achieved Is Crucial.

The Three Most Important Words In Investing...margin Of Safety.

What We Really Want To Do Is Buy Businesses That We Would Be Happy To Own Forever.

Ignore The Stock Market, Ignore The Economy, And Buy A Business You Understand.

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.

If Horses Had Controlled Investment Decisions, There Would Have Been No Auto Industry.

I Don't Want To Hold Out False Hopes That The - By Some Magic Moment, That Things Will Turn Around In A Couple Months Because They Wouldn't, Charlie. I Mean, And It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People.

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

The Most Common Cause Of Low Prices Is Pessimism - Some Times Pervasive, Some Times Specific To A Company Or Industry. We Want To Do Business In Such An Environment, Not Because We Like Pessimism But Because We Like The Prices It Produces. It's Optimism That Is The Enemy Of The Rational Buyer.

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

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

If You Can't Read The Scoreboard. You Don't Know The Score. If You Don't Know The Score, You Can't Tell The Winners From The Losers.

When Berkshire Hathaway Laid Out Three Billion Dollars For Ge Today, We Didn't Spend It, We Invested It. When The Federal Government Buys The Mortgages, They're Not Spending It, They're Investing It. Now, They're Investing It In Distress Type Assets But They're Buying Them At Distress Prices If They Buy Them At Market. It's The Kind Of Stuff I Love To Do. I Just Don't Have 700 Million. Maybe We Could Go In It Together.

You're Dealing With A Lot Of Silly People In The Marketplace; It's Like A Great Big Casino And Everyone Else Is Boozing. If You Can Stick With Pepsi, You Should Be Ok.

Investing Money

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

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

Beware [of] The Investment Activity That Produces Applause; The Great Moves Are Usually Greeted By Yawns.

I Spend Twelve Hours A Week - A Little Over 10% Of My Waking Hours - Playing The Game. Now I Am Trying To Figure Out How To Get By On Less Sleep In Order To Fit In A Few More Hands.

When We Went Crazy, And We Did Go Crazy On Residential Real Estate, It Set Things In Motion That Just - The Dominoes Started Toppling.

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

Be Fearful When There Is Greed And Be Greedy When There Is Fear.

Larger Sums May Be An Advantage At Some Cases And A Disadvantage At Others.

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 Will Be Right, Over The Course Of Many Transactions, If Your Hypotheses Are Correct, Your Facts Are Correct, And Your Reasoning Is Correct. True Conservatism Is Only Possible Through Knowledge And Reason.

Investing Is Forgoing Consumption Now In Order To Have The Ability To Consume More At A Later Date.

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

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

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.

It's Got To Be The Best Intellectual Exercise Out There. You're Seeing Through New Situations Every Ten Minutes. In The Stock Market You Don't Base Your Decisions On What The Market Is Doing, But On What You Think Is Rational. Bridge Is About Weighing Gain/loss Ratios. You're Doing Calculations All The Time.

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

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

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.

I May Have More Money Than You, But Money Doesn't Make The Difference. If There Is Any Difference Between You And Me, It May Simply Be That I Get Up And Have A Chance To Do What I Love To Do, Every Day. If You Learn Anything From Me, This Is The Best Advice I Can Give You.

Intrinsic Value Can Be Defined Simply: It Is The Discounted Value Of The Cash That Can Be Taken Out Of A Business During Its Remaining Life. The Calculation Of Intrinsic Value, Though, Is Not So Simple. As Our Definition Suggests, Intrinsic Value Is An Estimate Rather Than A Precise Figure, And It Is Additionally An Estimate That Must Be Changed If Interest Rates Move Or Forecasts Of Future Cash Flows Are Revised.

I Am Out Of Step With Present Conditions. When The Game Is No Longer Played Your Way, It Is Only Human To Say The New Approach Is All Wrong, Bound To Lead To Trouble, And So On. On One Point, However, I Am Clear. I Will Not Abandon A Previous Approach Whose Logic I Understand ( Although I Find It Difficult To Apply ) Even Though It May Mean Foregoing Large, And Apparently Easy, Profits To Embrace An Approach Which I Don't Fully Understand, Have Not Practiced Successfully, And Which Possibly Could Lead To Substantial Permanent Loss Of Capital.

When You're Associating With The People That You Love, Doing What You Love, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

Doing What You Love

The Investor Of Today Does Not Profit From Yesterday's Growth.

Investing Money

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.

Although We Deal With Probabilities And Expectations, The Actual Results Can Deviate Substantially From Such Expectations, Particularly On A Short-term Basis.

The Strategy We've Adopted Precludes Our Following Standard Diversification Dogma. Many Pundits Would Therefore Say The Strategy Must Be Riskier Than That Employed By More Conventional Investors. We Disagree. We Believe That A Policy Of Portfolio Concentration May Well Decrease Risk If It Raises, As It Should, Both The Intensity With Which An Investor Thinks About A Business And The Comfort-level He Must Feel With Its Economic Characteristics Before Buying Into It.

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

Never Depend On Single Income. Make Investment To Create A Second Source.

When It's Raining Gold, Reach For A Bucket, Not A Thimble.

It's Quite Clear That Stocks Are Cheaper Than Bonds. I Can't Imagine Anybody Having Bonds In Their Portfolio When They Can Own Equities, A Diversified Group Of Equities. But People Do Because They, The Lack Of Confidence. But That's What Makes For The Attractive Prices. If They Had Their Confidence Back, They Wouldn't Be Selling At These Prices. And Believe Me, It Will Come Back Over Time.

First Come The Innovators, Then Come The Imitators, Then Come The Idiots.

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

He Must Never Forget Charlie's Plea: Tell Me Where I'm Going To Die, So I'll Never Go There.

I Make No Effort To Predict The Course Of General Business Or The Stock Market. Period. However, Currently There Are Practices Snowballing In The Security Markets And Business World Which, While Devoid Of Short Term Predictive Value, Bother Me As To Possible Long Term Consequences.

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.

When They Get Their Ego Involved, People Do Things They Shouldn't Do.

I Bought A Company In The Mid-90s Called Dexter Shoe And Paid $400 Million For It. And It Went To Zero. And I Gave About $400 Million Worth Of Berkshire Stock, Which Is Probably Now Worth $400 Billion. But I've Made Lots Of Dumb Decisions. That's Part Of The Game.

Over The Years, A Number Of Very Smart People Have Learned The Hard Way That A Long String Of Impressive Numbers Multiplied By A Single Zero Always Equals Zero.

Turnarounds Seldom Turn.

Whatever You Like To Do, Make It A Hobby And Whatever The World Likes To Do, Make It A Business.

You Should Invest Like A Catholic Marries: For Life.

Only When The Tide Goes Out Do You Discover Who's Been Swimming Naked.

Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

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.

A Home Is One Of The Most Important Assets That Most People Will Ever Buy. Homes Are Also Where Memories Are Made And You Want To Work With Someone You Can Trust.

We Don't Get Paid For Being Busy, We Get Paid For Being Right.

Like I Say, I Don't Think It'll Be Done Perfectly. Maybe We'll End Up With A Little Bit Better [economy] System.

Writing Checks To The Irs That Include Strings Of Zeros Does Not Bother Me ... Overall, We Feel Extraordinarily Lucky To Have Been Dealt A Hand In Life That Enables Us To Write Large Checks To The Government Rather Than One Requiring The Government To Regularly Write Checks To Us-say, Because We Are Disabled Or Unemployed.

That Goes Back To 1932, Although It Was Really Implemented In '33 Under Jesse Jones, And It Invested In Mostly Banks Initially And Preferred Stock And That Sort Of Thing. So There Are Two Things Needed In The System, The One That's Needed Overwhelmingly Is Liquidity. I Mean, When People Are Trying To [unintelligible], There Has To Be Somebody There To Buy.

A Diamond Cannot Be Polished Without Friction, Nor A Person Perfected Without Trials. Someone Is Enjoying Shade Today Because Someone Planted A Tree A Long Time Ago.

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

Passion For What You Do

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.

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

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

Never Give Up Searching For The Job That You’re Passionate About. Try To Find The Job You’d Have If You Were Independently Rich. Forget About The Pay. When You’re Associating With The People That You Love, Doing What You Love, It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than That.

Doing What You Love

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

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

You Have To Understand Accounting And You Have To Understand The Nuances Of Accounting. It's The Language Of Business And It's An Imperfect Language, But Unless You Are Willing To Put In The Effort To Learn Accounting - How To Read And Interpret Financial Statements - You Really Shouldn't Select Stocks Yourself

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

What Could Be More Advantageous In An Intellectual Contest - Whether It Be Chess, Bridge, Or Stock Selection - Than To Have Opponents Who Have Been Taught That Thinking Is A Waste Of Energy?

All There Is To Investing Is Picking Good Stocks At Good Times And Staying With Them As Long As They Remain Good Companies.

We Enjoy The Process Far More Than The Proceeds.

A Pin Lies In Wait For Every Bubble. And When The Two Eventually Meet, A New Wave Of Investors Learns Some Very Old Lessons: First, Many In Wall Street (a Community In Which Quality Control Is Not Prized) Will Sell Investors Anything They Will Buy. Second, Speculation Is Most Dangerous When It Looks Easiest.

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.

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

You've Got The Right - You've Got A Wonderful Person With Sheila Bair, Most Of The Viewers Have Never Heard Of Sheila Bair. [she] Has Taken Eight Percent Of The Deposits In The United States And Seamlessly Moved Those Over To Sound Institutions Which In Turn Have Gotten More Capital, Ended Up, It's Been A Magnificent Job.she'll Never Get A Golden Parachute Or Any Severance Pay Or Anything. She's Done A Great Job. We've Got Some Great Public Servants. We Have I Think The Right People In There To Get The Job Done, And Then They Need More Tools.

You Are Neither Right Nor Wrong Because The Crowd Disagrees With You.

Wild Swings In Share Prices Have More To Do With The "lemming- Like" Behaviour Of Institutional Investors Than With The Aggregate Returns Of The Company They Own.

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.

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.

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