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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.

-Warren Buffett

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I Don't Have My

Warren Buffett

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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.

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What's Nice About Investing Is You Don't Have To Swing At Every Pitch.

Fear Is The Foe Of The Faddist, But The Friend Of The Fundamentalist.

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

I Never Buy Anything Unless I Can Fill Out On A Piece Of Paper My Reasons. I May Be Wrong, But I Would Know The Answer To That ...i'm Paying $32 Billion Today For The Coca Cola Company Because... If You Can't Answer That Question, You Shouldn't Buy It. If You Can Answer That Question, And You Do It A Few Times, You'll Make A Lot Of Money.

Investing Your Time

Don't Risk What Is Important To You, To Get What Is Not Important To You.

If You Were At Lehman, The Same Thing Happened. If You Were At Aig, The Shareholders Are Getting Creamed On These Things. And Those Shareholders Are Not Just A Bunch Of Big Shots In Wall Street. Those Are Pension Funds, And Those Are Investors All Over The Country. I Wouldn't Worry Too Much About That. Justice Won't Be Perfect On It.

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

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.

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).

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

When Asked How He Became So Successful In Investing, Buffett Answered: 'we Read Hundreds And Hundreds Of Annual Reports Every Year.

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

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.

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

I Think Once You Start Putting Phony Figures Into Financial Statements, You Get In A Lot Of Trouble. And We've Seen So Much Of That In The Last 20 Years.

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

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.

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.

I Don't Think It Would Be Crazy To Have A Model Or An Entity Model On The Reconstruction Finance Corp.

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

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

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

The American Economy Is Going To Do Fine. But It Won't Do Fine Every Year And Every Week And Every Month. I Mean, If You Don't Believe That, Forget About Buying Stocks Anyway... It's A Positive-sum Game, Long Term. And The Only Way An Investor Can Get Killed Is By High Fees Or By Trying To Outsmart The Market.

Stop Trying To Predict The Direction Of The Stock Market, The Economy Or Elections.

If, When Making A Stock Investment, You're Not Considering Holding It At Least Ten Years, Don't Waste More Than Ten Minutes Considering It.

Activity Is The Enemy Of Investment Returns.

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

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

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

I Wouldn’t Mind Going To Jail If I Had Three Cellmates Who Played Bridge

An Investor Should Act As Though He Had A Lifetime Decision Card With Just Twenty Punches On It.

I Never Invest In Anything That I Don't Understand.

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

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.

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.

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.

You Don't Have To Be A Genius To Invest Well

If You Knew What Was Going To Happen In The Economy, You Still Wouldn't Necessarily Know What Was Going To Happen In The Stock Market.

... 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.

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.

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

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

It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People. They Will Turn Around.

Diversification May Preserve Wealth, But Concentration Builds Wealth.

Concentration Of Wealth

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.

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

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

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

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

[gold] Gets Dug Out Of The Ground In Africa, Or Someplace. Then We Melt It Down, Dig Another Hole, Bury It Again And Pay People To Stand Around Guarding It. It Has No Utility. Anyone Watching From Mars Would Be Scratching Their Head.

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

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

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

Having A Large Amount Of Leverage Is Like Driving A Car With A Dagger On The Steering Wheel Pointed At Your Heart. If You Do That, You Will Be A Better Driver. There Will Be Fewer Accidents But When They Happen, They Will Be Fatal.

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

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

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.

During Inflation, Goodwill Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving.

Mental Toughness

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.

There's Not Many Businesses Where Someone Can Come In And Offer To Cut The Price In Half And Somebody Doesn't Think About Shifting. But That's The Nature Of The Ratings Business.

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

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.

I Mean, Hank Paulson Is In There [ Treasury] At The Wrong Time, Probably Shouldn't Have Taken The Job. He's A Friend Of Mine. But He Knows Markets, He Knows Corporations' Work, He Knows Money, And He's Got The Interests Of The Country At Heart.

If You’re In The Luckiest One Per Cent Of Humanity, You Owe It To The Rest Of Humanity To Think About The Other 99 Per Cent.

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

The Critical Investment Factor Is Determining The Intrinsic Value Of A Business And Paying A Fair Or Bargain Price.

Never Give Up Searching For The Job That You're Passionate About.

Doing What You Love

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.

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.'

The Greatest Enemies Of The Equity Investor Are Expenses And Emotions.

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

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.

Managers Thinking About Accounting Issues Should Never Forget One Of Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Riddles: How Many Legs Does A Dog Have, If You Call A Tail A Leg? The Answer: Four, Because Calling A Tail A Leg Doesn't Make It A Leg.

It's Nice To Have A Lot Of Money, But You Know, You Don't Want To Keep It Around Forever. I Prefer Buying Things. Otherwise, It's A Little Like Saving Sex For Your Old Age.

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

It's Good To Learn From Your Mistakes. It's Better To Learn From Other People's Mistakes.

Learn From Your Mistakes

When A Management With A Reputation For Brilliance Tackles A Business With A Reputation For Bad Economics, It Is The Reputation Of The Business That Remains Intact.

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

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

Never Get Too Hung Up On Mistakes.

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

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.

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.

In The Financial Markets I Find It Easy To Predict What Will Happen And Very Difficult To Predict When It Will Happen. I Think That Things Were Clear During The Bubble As To What Would Happen Eventually.

Occasionally, A Man Must Rise Above Principles.

You Can Be Sure That Over The Next 10 Years, You'll See Something That You Did Not Think Was Possible.

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

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.

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

Confidence In Markets And In Institutions, It's A Lot Like Oxygen. When You Have It, You Don't Even Think About It. It's Indispensable. You Can Go Years Without Thinking About It. When It's Gone For Five Minutes, It's The Only Thing To Think About.

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

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

Executive Compensation

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

At Age 19, I Read A Book [the Intelligent Investor] And What I'm Doing Today, At Age 76, Is Running Things Through The Same Thought Process I Learned From The Book I Read At 19.

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

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.

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

I Bought My First Stock In 1942, In The Summer Of '42. I Was 11 Years Old. And So 75 Years Have Gone By. And I Have Never Known What The Market's Going To Do The Next Day. And That's Not My Game. My Game Is To Decide Whether I'm In The Right Economy, Which America's Definitely Been Ever Since That Time. The Dow Has Gone From 100 To 21,000 During That Time. And No Matter What The Headlines Say, Or Terrible Things Are Happening - We Were Losing The War In The Pacific When I First Bought Stocks.

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.

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.

Never Invest In A Business You Don't Understand.

Energy Deregulation Will Be The Largest Transfer Of Wealth In History.

Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.

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.

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

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

You Should Look At Stocks As Small Pieces Of Business.

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.

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.

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.

Personally, I Really Hope I Can Treat Everyone Equally. I Think I Have Done A Pretty Good Job So Far But I Know I Can Do It Better.

A Great Investment Opportunity Occurs When A Marvelous Business Encounters A One-time Huge, But Solvable Problem.

Someone Is Sitting In The Shade Today Because Someone Planted A Tree A Long Time Ago.

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

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

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

I’ve Never Believed In Risking What My Family And Friends Have And Need In Order To Pursue What They Don’t Have And Don’t Need.

Family And Friends

Success Is Having People Love You That You Want To Have Love You.

You Don't Need To Be A Rocket Scientist. Investing Is Not A Game Where The Guy With The 160 Iq Beats The Guy With 130 Iq.

Investment Success

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

Never Depend On A Single Source Of Income.

Someone's Sitting In The Shade Today Because Someone Planted A Tree A Long Time Ago. The Person Sitting In The Shade Now Should Be Grateful For The Person Who Planted And Tended That Tree. That Includes All Those Benefactors Of Humanity Throughout History That Created, Invented, Financed, Produced, Maintained And Improved All That We Enjoy Today.

Well, One Time Some Attractive Woman Sat Next To Charlie And Asked Him What He Owed His Success To, And, Unfortunately, She Insisted On A One Word Answer. He Had A Speech Prepared That Would Have Gone On For Several Hours. But When Forced To Boil It Down To One Word, He Said That Was "rational". You Know, He Comes Equipped For Rationality, And He Applies It In Business. He Doesn't Always Apply It Elsewhere, But He Applies It In Business And That Has Made Him A Huge Business Success.

Business Success

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

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

The Secret Is To Find What You Love To Do.i Mean, I Tell The Students Look For The Job That You Would Take If You Didn't Need A Job. I Mean, It's That Simple. And I Was Lucky Enough To Find It Very Early In Life. And Then The Second Thing Is To Have People Around You That Make Feel Good Every Day, And Make You A Better Person Than You Otherwise Would Be.

There's Nothing Inappropriate About Having Debt In America. It's What Helped Us Grow Over Time. And It's When Debt Gets Out Of Control That You Worry.

In My View, [the Trade Deficit] Will Create Political Turmoil At Some Point...pretty Soon, I Think There Will Be A Big Adjustment.

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

Would You Rather Be The World's Greatest Lover, But Have Everyone Think You're The World's Worst Lover? Or Would You Rather Be The World's Worst Lover But Have Everyone Think You're The World's Greatest Lover? Now, That's An Interesting Question.

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

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.

To Invest Successfully, You Need Not Understand Beta, Efficient Markets, Modern Portfolio Theory, Option Pricing Or Emerging Markets. You May, In Fact, Be Better Off Knowing Nothing Of These. That, Of Course, Is Not The Prevailing View At Most Business Schools, Whose Finance Curriculum Tends To Be Dominated By Such Subjects. In Our View, Though, Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses - How To Value A Business, And How To Think About Market Prices.

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.

In Looking For People To Hire, Look For Three Qualities: Integrity, Intelligence And Energy. And If They Don't Have The First, The Other Two Will Kill You.

Mr. Market Is Your Servant, Not Your Guide.

I Never Try To Predict The Market.

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.

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

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

Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You Are Doing So Wide Diversification Is Only Required When Investors Are Ignorant. You Only Have To Do A Very Few Things In Your Life So Long As You Don't Do Too Many Things Wrong.

The Wise Man Once Said Invest Young

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

Inspirational Life

The Happiest People Do Not Necessarily Have The Best Things. They Simply Appreciate The Things They Have.

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

The Approach And Strategies Are Very Similar In That You Gather All The Information You Can And Then Keep Adding To That Base Of Information As Things Develop. You Do Whatever The Probabilities Indicated Based On The Knowledge That You Have At That Time, But You Are Always Willing To Modify Your Behaviour Or Your Approach As You Get New Information. In Bridge, You Behave In A Way That Gets The Best From Your Partner. And In Business, You Behave In The Way That Gets The Best From Your Managers And Your Employees.

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.

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

If You Have More Than 120 Or 130 I.q. Points, You Can Afford To Give The Rest Away. You Don't Need Extraordinary Intelligence To Succeed As An Investor.

In A Bull Market, One Must Avoid The Error Of The Preening Duck That Quacks Boastfully After A Torrential Rainstorm, Thinking That Its Paddling Skills Have Caused It To Rise In The World. A Right-thinking Duck Would Instead Compare Its Position After The Downpour To That Of The Other Ducks On The Pond.

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

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

Successful Investing

I Would Push Purchasing Power - You Push Out $1,000 Of Purchasing To Those People, It's Going To Get - It's Going To Get Spent. And It Needs To Be Spent. They Need It. And It Should Come, To Some Extent, From Guys Like Me.

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

I Think That They Hoped The Private Sector Would Come In. And The Private Sector Tried To Come In Until They Saw The Size Of The Problem. I Mean, From Were People On That Weekend That Thought They'd Had A Solution. And Then The Hole Kept Getting Bigger And Bigger. And All Of A Sudden Became Apparent That 20 Billion Wouldn't Do It And 30 Billion Wouldn't Do It And 40 Billion Wouldn't Do It. So It Got Beyond Anybody's Ability To Certainly To Do It In A Short Period Of Time.

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.

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

Investing Money

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.

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

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.

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.

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

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.

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

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.

I Think The Fdic Was One Of The Great Inventions Of The American.

Great Inventions

I Sent One E-mail In My Life. I Sent It To Jeff Raikes At Microsoft, And It Ended Up In Court In Minneapolis, So I Am One For One.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

If I Taught A Class, On My Final Exam I Would Take An Internet Company And Ask, 'how Much Is This Company Worth?' Anyone Who Would Answer, I Would Flunk.

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

We Rarely Use Much Debt And, When We Do, We Attempt To Structure It On A Long-term Fixed Rate Basis. We Will Reject Interesting Opportunities Rather Than Over-leverage Our Balance Sheet. This Conservatism Has Penalized Our Results But It Is The Only Behavior That Leaves Us Comfortable, Considering Our Fiduciary Obligations To Policyholders, Depositors, Lenders And The Many Equity Holders Who Have Committed Unusually Large Portions Of Their Net Worth To Our Care.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Can Afford To Lose Money - Even A Lot Of Money. But We Can't Afford To Lose Reputation - Even A Shred Of Reputation.

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.

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

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

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.

It's The Deleveraging That's Going On Right Now That Has Caused The Credit Crisis.

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.

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

This Economy Doesn't Work Well Without The Lubrication Of Credit And Trust.

The Good Thing Is, We Have Household Formation In This Country.

My Rather Puritanical View Is That Any Investment Manager, Whether Operating As Broker, Investment Counselor Of A Trust Department, Investment Company, Etc., Should Be Willing To State Unequivocally What He Is Going To Attempt To Accomplish And How He Proposes To Measure The Extent To Which He Gets The Job Done.

Never Risk What You Have And Need For What We Don't Have And Don't Need.

If You Do Smart Things And Use Leverage And Do One Wrong Thing Along The Way, It Could Wipe You Out, Because Anything Times Zero Is Zero. But It's Reinforcing When The People Around You Are Doing It Successfully, You're Doing It Successfully, And It's A Lot Like Cinderella At The Ball.

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 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.

If You Know How To Value Businesses, It's Crazy To Own 50 Stocks Or 40 Stocks Or 30 Stocks, Probably Because There Aren't That Many Wonderful Businesses Understandable To A Single Human Being In All Likelihood. To Forego Buying More Of Some Super-wonderful Business And Instead Put Your Money Into #30 Or #35 On Your List Of Attractiveness Just Strikes Charlie And Me As Madness.

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

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