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I Could End The Deficit In 5 Minutes. You Just Pass A Law That Says That Anytime There Is A Deficit Of More Than 3% Of Gdp All Sitting Members Of Congress Are Ineligible For Reelection.

-Warren Buffett

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I Could End The

Warren Buffett

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I Could End The Deficit In 5 Minutes. You Just Pass A Law That Says That Anytime There Is A Deficit Of More Than 3% Of Gdp All Sitting Members Of Congress Are Ineligible For Reelection.

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Lethargy Bordering On Sloth Remains The Cornerstone Of Our Investment Style. The Exception Was Wells Fargo, A Superbly-managed, High-return Banking Operation In Which We Increased Our Ownership To Just Under 10%, The Most We Can Own Without The Approval Of The Federal Reserve Board.

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.

If You Understood A Business Perfectly And The Future Of The Business, You Would Need Very Little In The Way Of A Margin Of Safety. So, The More Vulnerable The Business Is, Assuming You Still Want To Invest In It, The Larger Margin Of Safety You'd Need. If You're Driving A Truck Across A Bridge That Says It Holds 10,000 Pounds And You've Got A 9,800 Pound Vehicle, If The Bridge Is 6 Inches Above The Crevice It Covers, You May Feel Okay, But If It's Over The Grand Canyon, You May Feel You Want A Little Larger Margin Of Safety.

We Say We Are Trying To Buy Into Businesses With Excellent Economics, Run By Honest And Able People At A Decent Price. We Buy Very Few Securities, So We Look At It As "focused" Investing.

My Wealth Has Come From A Combination Of Living In America, Some Lucky Genes, And Compound Interest.

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

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

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

I Don't Want To Be On The Other Side Of The Table From The Customer. I Was Never Selling Anything That I Didn't Believe In Myself Or Use Myself.

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.

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

Never Test The Depth Of River With Both The Feet.

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.

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

Have Confidence

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

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.

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

I Don't Really Think That, As A Society, We [americans] Want To Confer Blessings On Generation After Generation Who Contribute Nothing To Society, Simply Because Somebody In The Far Distant Past Happened To Amass A Great Sum Of Wealth.

Investors Making Purchases In An Overheated Market Need To Recognize That It May Often Take An Extended Period For The Value Of Even An Outstanding Company To Catch Up With The Price They Paid.

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

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

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

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

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.

Either They're Trying To Con You Or They're Trying To Con Themselves.

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

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 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.

Let Only Individuals Contribute - With Sensible Limits Per Election. Otherwise, We Are Well On Our Way To Ensuring That A Government Of The Moneyed, By The Moneyed, And For The Moneyed Shall Not Perish From The Earth.

Accounting Is The Language Of Business.

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

Money To Some Extent Sometimes Let You Be In More Interesting Environments. But It Can't Change How Many People Love You Or How Healthy You Are.

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.

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

A Prediction About The Direction Of The Stock Market Tells You Nothing About Where Stocks Are Headed, But A Whole Lot About The Person Doing The Predicting.

If At First You Do Succeed, Quit Trying On Investing.

Trust Is Like The Air We Breathe--when It's Present, Nobody Really Notices; When It's Absent, Everybody Notices.

When We Own Portions Of Outstanding Businesses With Outstanding Managements, Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Investing Money

We Will Reject Interesting Opportunities Rather Than Over-leverage Our Balance Sheet.

Who Would Think Of Buying Or Selling A Private Business Because Of Someone's Guess On The Stock Market? The Availability Of A Quotation For Your Business Interest (stock) Should Always Be An Asset To Be Utilized If Desired. If It Gets Silly Enough In Either Direction, You Take Advantage Of It. Its Availability Should Never Be Turned Into A Livability Whereby Its Periodic Aberrations In Turn Formulate Your Judgements.

If You've Got The Power To Raise Prices Without Losing Business To A Competitor, You've Got A Very Good Business. And If You Have To Have A Prayer Session Before Raising The Price By A Tenth Of A Cent, Then You've Got A Terrible Business. I've Been In Both, And I Know The Difference.

Calculate "owner Earnings" To Get A True Reflection Of Value.

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.

We Simply Attempt To Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy And To Be Greedy Only When Others Are Fearful.

Does The Business Have Favourable Long Term Prospects?

The Stock Market Is A No-called-strike Game. You Don’t Have To Swing At Everything – You Can Wait For Your Pitch.

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

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

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

Investing Money

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.

Intrinsic Value

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

Possessing A Powerful Worldwide Brand Is Essential For Sustained Success.

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

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

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.

I Always Invest In Companies An Idiot Could Run, Because One Day One Will.

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

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.

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

I Choose To Work With Every Single Person That I Work With. That Ends Up Being The Most Important Factor. I Don't Interact With People I Don't Like Or Admire. That's The Key. It's Like Marrying.

Don't Settle For Anything Other Than Your Passion - If You're Lucky Enough To Find It.

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.

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

If You Can't Communicate And Talk To Other People And Get Across Your Ideas, You're Giving Up Your Potential.

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.

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.

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.

I Have Always Cautioned Partners That I Considered Three Years A Minimum In Determining Whether We Were "performing".

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

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 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.

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.

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

We Will Prosper Or Suffer In Controlled Investments In Relation To The Operating Performances Of Our Businesses - We Will Not Attempt To Profit By Playing Various Games In The Securities Markets.

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'll Take The Deal, Whatever You Want To Do.

Market Prices For Stocks Fluctuate At Great Amplitudes Around Intrinsic Value But, Over The Long Term, Intrinsic Value Is Virtually Always Reflected At Some Point In Market Price.

Intrinsic Value

Long Ago, Sir Isaac Newton Gave Us Three Laws Of Motion, Which Were The Work Of Genius. But Sir Isaac's Talents Didn't Extend To Investing: He Lost A Bundle In The South Sea Bubble, Explaining Later, 'i Can Calculate The Movement Of The Stars, But Not The Madness Of Men.' If He Had Not Been Traumatized By This Loss, Sir Isaac Might Well Have Gone On To Discover The Fourth Law Of Motion: For Investors As A Whole, Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

You Can't Stand To See Your Neighbor Getting Rich. You Know You're Smarter Than He Is And He's Doing These Things And He's Getting Rich.

I Would Rather Sustain The Penalties Resulting From Over-conservatism Than Face The Consequences Of Error, Perhaps With Permanent Capital Loss, Resulting From The Adoption Of "new Era" Philosophy Where Trees Really Do Grow To The Sky.

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

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.

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

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

Only When You Combine Sound Intellect With Emotional Discipline Do You Get Rational Behavior.

Investment Decision Should Be Made On The Basis Of The Most Probable Compounding Of After-tax Net Worth With Minimum Risk.

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

I Think The Biggest Thing We Need Is To Unclog The Credit Markets, And We May Need Another Stimulus - If We Do, It's - It Should Go To The Lower And Middle-income People.

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

What You Really Want To Do In Investments Is Figure Out What's Important And Knowable. If It's Unimportant Or Unknowable You Forget About It.

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

Investing Money

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

I Think Any Time You Couple The Term "wall Street" With "bailout" Or Something Like That, You Know - I Don't Like What's Going On In Wall Street.

Good Profits Simply Are Not Inconsistent With Good Behavior.

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.

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.

I Make Plenty Of Mistakes And I'll Make Plenty More Mistakes, Too. That's Part Of The Game. You've Just Got To Make Sure That The Right Things Overcome The Wrong Ones.

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.

The Dumbest Reason In The World To Buy A Stock Is Because It's Going Up.

We Believe That According The Name 'investors' To Institutions That Trade Actively Is Like Calling Someone Who Repeatedly Engages In One-night Stands A 'romantic.'

The Fact That People Will Be Full Of Greed, Fear, Or Folly Is Predictable. The Sequence Is Not Predictable.

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.

The Ideal Business Is One That Earns Very High Returns On Capital And That Keeps Using Lots Of Capital At Those High Returns. That Becomes A Compounding Machine.

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.

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.

Success In Investing Doesn’t Correlate With I.q. Once You Are Above The Level Of 25; Once You Have Ordinary Intelligence, What You Need Is The Temperament To Control The Urges That Get Other People Into Trouble In Investing.

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.

The Value Of Market Esoterica To The Consumer Of Investment Advice Is A Different Story. In My Opinion, Investment Success Will Not Be Produced By Arcane Formulae, Computer Programs Or Signals Flashed By The Price Behavior Of Stocks And Markets. Rather An Investor Will Succeed By Coupling Good Business Judgment With An Ability To Insulate His Thoughts And Behavior From The Super-contagious Emotions That Swirl About The Marketplace.

Investment Success

I Have A House That I Bought 55 Years Ago. It's Warm In The Winter; It's Cool In The Summer. It Has Everything I Wanted, Plus It Has All Kinds Of Good Memories. Like My Kids, I Have Good Thoughts About That. I Can't Imagine Living Any Better.

People Should Always Know Better.

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

If You Buy Things You Do Not Need, Soon You Will Have To Sell Things You Need.

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

You’d Get Very Rich If You Thought Of Yourself As Having A Card With Only Twenty Punches In A Lifetime, And Every Financial Decision Used Up One Punch. You’d Resist The Temptation To Dabble. You’d Make More Good Decisions And You’d Make More Big Decisions.

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

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

It Irritates The Hell Out Of Me But You Can't Buy Love.

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

Does Management Resist The Institutional Imperative?

I Measure Success By How Many People Love Me. And The Best Way To Be Loved Is To Be Lo Veable.

Measure Of 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.

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

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.

[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.

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

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

Too Often, Executive Compensation In The U.s. Is Ridiculously Out Of Line With Performance. That Won't Change, Moreover, Because The Deck Is Stacked Against Investors When It Comes To The Ceo's Pay.

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.

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Best Asset Is Your Own Self. You Can Become To An Enormous Degree The Person You Want To Be

If Book Knowledge Made Great Investors, Than The Librarians Would All Be Rich.

Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You're Doing.

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.

Occasionally, A Man Must Rise Above Principles.

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.

For Some Reason, People Take Their Cues From Price Action Rather Than From Values. What Doesn't Work Is When You Start Doing Things That You Don't Understand Or Because They Worked Last Week For Somebody Else. The Dumbest Reason In The World To Buy A Stock Is Because It's Going Up.

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

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

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

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

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

We've Actually Been Pretty Good On Exports. I Mean We Are Exporting 12% Of Our Gdp Now Roughly.

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

The Power Of Unconditional Love. I Mean, There Is No Power On Earth Like Unconditional Love.

Unconditional Love

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

The Most Common Cause Of Low Prices Is Pessimism - Sometimes Pervasive, Sometimes 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.

Don't Invest In Pieces Of Papers (stocks), Invest In Great Businesses Underlying Them

Your Premium Brand Had Better Be Delivering Something Special, Or It's Not Going To Get The Business.

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

Equities Will Do Well Over Time - You Just Have To Avoid Getting Excited When Other People Are Getting Excited.

Over The Years, Charlie [munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] And I Have Observed Many Accounting-based Frauds Of Staggering Size. Few Of The Perpetrators Have Been Punished; Many Have Not Even Been Censured. It Has Been Far Safer To Steal Large Sums With Pen Than Small Sums With A Gun.

Investment Must Be Rational; If You Can't Understand It, Don't Do It.

Other Guys Read Playboy. I Read Annual Reports.

Shares Are Not Mere Pieces Of Paper. They Represent Part Ownership Of A Business. So, When Contemplating An Investment, Think Like A Prospective Owner.

I Am Quite Serious When I Say That I Do Not Believe There Are, On The Whole Earth Besides, So Many Intensified Bores As In These United States. No Man Can Form An Adequate Idea Of The Real Meaning Of The Word, Without Coming Here.

We Look For Things I Can Understand. A Lot Of Businesses I Don't Understand.

It's Never Paid To Bet Against America.

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.

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.

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

It Is Not Necessary To Do Extraordinary Things To Get Extraordinary Results.

... But The Important Thing Is That When You Do Find One Where You Really Do Know What You Are Doing, You Must Buy In Quantity.... Charlie And I Have Made A Dozen Or So Very Big Decisions Relative To Net Worth, Although Not As Big As They Should Have Been. And In Each Of Those, We've Known That We Were Almost Certain To Be Right Going In.

Risk Is A Part Of God's Game, Alike For Men And Nations.

John Maynard Keynes Essentially Said, Don't Try And Figure Out What The Market Is Doing. Figure Out A Business You Understand, And Concentrate.

It’s Not That I Want Money. It’s The Fun Of Making Money And Watching It Grow.

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.

I Prefer Liquor Store Robbers With Hungry Kids To Companies That Locate Offshore To Avoid U.s. Taxes.

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.

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

Valuing A Business Is Part Art And Part Science.

The Most Dangerous Distractions Are The Ones You Love, But That Don’t Love You Back.

A Newspaper That Reduces Its Coverage Of The News Important To Its Community Is Certain To Reduce Its Readership As Well

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.

You Can't Make A Good Deal With A Bad Person.

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

You Do Things When The Opportunities Come Along. I've Had Periods In My Life When I've Had A Bundle Of Ideas Come Along, And I've Had Long Dry Spells. If I Get An Idea Next Week, I'll Do Something. If Not, I Won't Do A Damn Thing.

Investing Money

I Happen To Have A Talent For Allocating Capital. But My Ability To Use That Talent Is Completely Dependent On The Society I Was Born Into. If I'd Been Born Into A Tribe Of Hunters, This Talent Of Mine Would Be Pretty Worthless. I Can't Run Very Fast. I'm Not Particularly Strong. I'd Probably End Up As Some Wild Animal's Dinner.

I Think I Could Make You Fifty Percent A Year On One Million Dollars. No, I Know I Could. I Guarantee That.

Guarantees That

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

I Can Do Anything I Want, Basically, As Long As It Doesn't Involve Athletic Ability, Or Something Like That.

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 Was Lucky Enough To Be Born In A Time And Place Where Society Values My Talent, And Gave Me A Good Education To Develop That Talent, And Set Up The Laws And The Finanical System To Let Me Do What I Love Doing-and Make A Lot Of Money Doing It. The Least I Can Do Is Help Pay For All That.

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.

If You Don't Know The Jewelry, Know The Jeweller

The Trick Is, When There Is Nothing To Do, Do Nothing.

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.

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.

Too Often, A Vast Collection Of Possessions Ends Up Possessing Its Owner.

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

Today People Who Hold Cash Equivalents Feel Comfortable. They Shouldn't. They Have Opted For A Terrible Long-term Asset, One That Pays Virtually Nothing And Is Certain To Depreciate In Value.

Can You Know You Can Have Institutions That Put Curbs On That In Various Ways, And Actually What The Banks, You Know, They Have Various Capital Ratios And That Sort Of Thing, But The Banks Got Around Them, I Mean, They Set Up Sieves And That Sort Of Thing Just To Get More Leverage. People Love Leverage When It's Working. I Mean, It's So Easy To Borrow Money From A Guy At X And Put It Out At X.

The Market System Rewards Me Outlandishly For What I Do, But That Doesn't Mean I'm Any More Deserving Of A Good Life Than A Teacher Or A Doctor Or Someone Who Fights In Afghanistan.

Investing Requires Qualities Of Temperament Way More Than It Requires Qualities Of Intellect.

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

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