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I Don't Know That I Could Draw One That's Perfect. But I'd Rather By Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong, And It Would Be Precisely Wrong To Turn It Down.

-Warren Buffett

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I Don't Know That

Warren Buffett

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I Don't Know That I Could Draw One That's Perfect. But I'd Rather By Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong, And It Would Be Precisely Wrong To Turn It Down.

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The Nature Of Democracy Is Such That When There's - There'll Be Revulsion, Obviously, Towards - That's Never Going To Happen Again.

We Need A Tax System That Essentially Takes Very Good Care Of The People Who Just Really Aren't As Well Adapted To The Market System But Are Nevertheless Doing Useful Things In The Society.

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

Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

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

We've Been In A Recession, By Any Common Sense Definition, Because If You Look At The American Public, They've Got 20 Billion - 20 Trillion, I Should Say, Worth Of Residential Homes.

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?

Making Money Isn't The Backbone Of Our Guiding Purpose; Making Money Is The By-product Of Our Guiding Purpose. If You're Doing Something You Love, You're More Likely To Put Your All Into It, And That Generally Equates To Making Money

I Always Say That In Investing You Want To Buy Stock In A Company That Has A Business That's So Good That An Idiot Can Run It, Because Sooner Or Later One Will. We Have A Country Like That.

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.

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

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

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.

The Idea That You Try To Time Purchases Based On What You Think Business Is Going To Do In The Next Year Or Two, I Think That's The Greatest Mistake That Investors Make Because It's Always Uncertain. People Say It's A Time Of Uncertainty. It Was Uncertain On September 10th, 2001, People Just Didn't Know It. It's Uncertain Every Single Day. So Take Uncertainty As Part Of Being Involved In Investment At All. But Uncertainty Can Be Your Friend. I Mean, When People Are Scared, They Pay Less For Things. We Try To Price. We Don't Try To Time At All.

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

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

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

In The Great Majority Of Cases We Simply Do Not Know Enough About The Industry Or Company To Come To Sensible Judgments-in That Situation We Pass.

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

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.

You Get What I Call The Natural Progression, The Three Is. The Innovators, The Imitators, And The Idiots.

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

Anyone Who Believes A Growth Rate In Excess Of 15% Per Annum Over The Long Term Is Attainable Should Pursue A Career In Sales, But Avoid One In Mathematics.

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.

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

The True Investor Welcomes Volatility ... A Wildly Fluctuating Market Means That Irrationally Low Prices Will Periodically Be Attached To Solid Businesses.

We Need To Throw The Resources At This That Are Necessary. But Like I Say, We Are Not Spending Money. I Mean, If We Buy These Assets Intelligently, The United States Treasury Will Make Money. I Mean, It's Borrowing Money. It's Just A Few Percent A Year.

The Patient That's On The Floor With The Cardiac Arrest Is Not Wall Street. It's The American Economy.

Inactivity Strikes Us As Intelligent Behavior.

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 Was Lucky To Have The Right Heroes. Tell Me Who Your Heroes Are And I'll Tell You How You'll Turn Out To Be. The Qualities Of The One You Admire Are The Traits That You, With A Little Practice, Can Make Your Own, And That, If Practiced, Will Become Habit Forming.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Insist On A Lot Of Time Being Spent, Almost Every Day, To Just Sit And Think. That Is Very Uncommon In American Business.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Investment Success

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.

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

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.

If You Cannot Control Your Emotions, You Cannot Control Your Money.

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

Look For Companies With High Profit Margins.

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

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

Gold Has Two Significant Shortcomings, Being Neither Of Much Use Nor Procreative.

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

For Some Reason People Take Their Cues From Price Action Rather Than From Values. Price Is What You Pay. Value Is What You Get.

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

If Principles Can Become Dated, They're Not Principles.

If You've Been Playing Poker For Half An Hour And You Still Don't Know Who The Patsy Is, You're The Patsy.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Think That Trying To Invest Through 535 People Is A Tough Job, You Know, And So I Would Give More Latitude.

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

Family And Friends

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

It's Going To Be Tough Because The Economy Is Going To Be Getting Worse For A While. And It Might Fall Off A Cliff If This Doesn't Pass. But Nobody Will Ever Know That If It Does.

An Investor Should Ordinarily Hold A Small Piece Of An Outstanding Business With The Same Tenacity That An Owner Would Exhibit If He Owned All Of That Business.

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.

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

Investing Money

The Major Asset In This Category Is Gold, Currently A Huge Favorite Of Investors Who Fear Almost All Other Assets, Especially Paper Money (of Whose Value, As Noted, They Are Right To Be Fearful). Gold, However, Has Two Significant Shortcomings, Being Neither Of Much Use Nor Procreative. True, Gold Has Some Industrial And Decorative Utility, But The Demand For These Purposes Is Both Limited And Incapable Of Soaking Up New Production. Meanwhile, If You Own One Ounce Of Gold For An Eternity, You Will Still Own One Ounce At Its End.

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

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

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

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

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.

Never Be Afraid To Ask For Too Much When Selling Or Offer Too Little When Buying.

Anything Can Happen In Stock Markets And You Ought To Conduct Your Affairs So That If The Most Extraordinary Events Happen, That You're Still Around To Play The Next Day.

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.

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

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

The Problem With Commodities Is That You Are Betting On What Someone Else Would Pay For Them In Six Months. The Commodity Itself Isn't Going To Do Anything For You....it Is An Entirely Different Game To Buy A Lump Of Something And Hope That Somebody Else Pays You More For That Lump Two Years From Now Than It Is To Buy Something That You Expect To Produce Income For You Over Time.

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

That's The Reality Of What They're Going To Sell Them To The Treasury For.

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.

I'd Rather Have A $10 Million Business Making 15 Per Cent Than A $100 Million Business Making 5 Per Cent.

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

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

We Have Provided Capital Here With A Couple Of Institutions Recently. The Federal Government Did That In The '30s For The Rfc And I Think There Could Well Be A Proper Role For Government In That.

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.

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

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

Our Goal Is To Find An Outstanding Business At A Sensible Price, Not A Mediocre Business At A Bargain Price.

I Am Not Worried About The Country. I'm Just Worried About Anything That Gums Up The Potential Of The Country. And Right Now, It's Pretty Gummed Up.

I Buy Expensive Suits - They Just Look Cheap On Me.

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

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.

I Insist On A Lot Of Time Being Spent, Almost Every Day, To Just Sit And Think. That Is Very Uncommon In American Business. I Read And Think. So I Do More Reading And Thinking, And Make Less Impulse Decisions Than Most People In Business. I Do It Because I Like This Kind Of Life.

When A Management With Reputation For Brilliance Gets Hooked Up With A Business With A Reputation For Bad Economics, It's The Reputation Of The Business That Remains Intact.

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

Mass Destruction

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.

I'm Always Interested In Understanding The Math Of Things And Understanding As Much As I Can About All Aspects Of Business. And What I Learn Today May Be Useful To Me Two Years From Now. That's Really The Wonderful Thing About Investments Is Your Knowledge Is Cumulative.

It's A Lot Easier To Buy Things Than It Is To Sell Them.

Good Profits Simply Are Not Inconsistent With Good Behavior.

Look At Market Fluctuations As Your Friend Rather Than Your Enemy; Profit From Folly Rather Than Participate In It.

Investment Success

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

Let Blockheads Read What Blockheads Wrote.

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.

As I Have Mentioned Before, We Cannot Make The Same Sort Of Money Out Of Permanent Ownership Of Controlled Businesses That Can Be Made From Buying And Reselling Such Businesses, Or From Skilled Investment In Marketable Securities. Nevertheless, They Offer A Pleasant Long Term Form Of Activity (when Conducted In Conjunction With High Grade, Able People) At Satisfactory Rates Of Return.

I Don't Know That I Could Draw One That's Perfect. But I'd Rather By Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong, And It Would Be Precisely Wrong To Turn It Down.

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

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.

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

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.

Just Imagine Living On 21,000 A Year. I Mean You Have 20 Percent Of The Population Doing That. So You Don't Have To Worry About Guys Like Me.

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

When People Talk About Cash Being King, It's Not King If It Just Sits There And Never Does Anything.

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

The U.s. Treasury Has Got Borrowing Costs Like Nobody Else Has.

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

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.

I Don't Measure My Life By The Money I've Made. Other People Might, But Certainly Don't.

We've Used Derivatives For Many, Many Years. I Don't Think Derivatives Are Evil, Per Se, I Think They Are Dangerous.

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

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

I Just Don't See Anything Available That Gives Any Reasonable Hope Of Delivering Such A Good Year And I Have No Desire To Grope Around, Hoping To 'get Lucky' With Other People's Money. I Am Not Attuned To This Market Environment, And I Don't Want To Spoil A Decent Record By Trying To Play A Game I Don't Understand Just So I Can Go Out A Hero.

If I Got A Chance To Take One Percent Of The Deal Either Way, I Would Make That Bet.

Market Price, While Used Exclusively To Value Our Investments In Minority Positions, Is Not A Relevant Factor When Applied To Our Controlling Interests.

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

Investing Money

Investment Success

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

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

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

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

The Only Way To Get Love Is To Be Lovable. It's Very Irritating If You Have A Lot Of Money. You'd Like To Think You Could Write A Check: "i'll Buy A Million Dollars' Worth Of Love." But It Doesn't Work That Way. The More You Give Love Away, The More You Get.

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

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

You Have No Ability, If You're A Financial Institution And You're Threatened With Criminal Prosecution, You Have No Ability To Negotiate.

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.

You Don't Need To Have Extraordinary Effort To Achieve Extraordinary Results. You Just Need To Do The Ordinary, Everyday Things Exceptionally Well.

Everyday Things

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

Managers That Always Promise To 'make The Numbers' Will At Some Point Be Tempted To Make Up The Numbers.

Our Marketable Equities Tell Us By Their Operating Results - Not By Their Daily, Or Even Yearly, Price Quotations - Whether Our Investments Are Successful. The Market May Ignore Business Success For A While, But Eventually Will Confirm It.

Business Success

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Learned To Go Into Business Only With People Whom I Like, Trust, And Admire.

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 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.

The Managers At Fault Periodically Report On The Lesson They Have Learned From The Latest Disappointment. They Then Usually Seek Out Future Lessons.

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

Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You're Doing.

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

I Think Confidence Will Come Back.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

Making Money Isn't The Backbone Of Our Guiding Purpose; It Is The By-product Of Our Guiding Purpose.

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.

Buy Companies With Strong Histories Of Profitability And With A Dominant Business Franchise.

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

People Should Always Know Better.

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

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

I Get To Do What I Like To Do Every Single Day Of The Year.

A Stock Doesn't Know That You Own It.

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

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.

With Enough Insider Information And A Million Dollars, You Can Go Broke In A Year.

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

I Have Worked With Investors For 60 Years And I Have Yet To See Anyone - Not Even When Capital Gains Rates Were 39.9 Percent In 1976-77 - Shy Away From A Sensible Investment Because Of The Tax Rate On The Potential Gain.

Basically, The Single-most Important Decision In Evaluating A Business Is Pricing Power.

Important Decisions

The Less Prudence With Which Others Conduct Their Affairs, The Greater The Prudence With Which We Should Conduct Our Own Affairs.

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.

In An Inflationary World, A Toll Bridge (like Company) Would Be A Great Thing To Own Because You've Laid Out The Capital Costs. You Built It In Old Dollars And You Don't Have To Keep Replacing It.

Cash Never Makes Us Happy, But It's Better To Have The Money Burning A Hole In Berkshire's Pocket Than Resting Comfortably In Someone Else's.

I Won't Close Down A Business Of Subnormal Profitability Merely To Add A Fraction Of A Point To Our Corporate Returns. I Also Feel It Inappropriate For Even An Exceptionally Profitable Company To Fund An Operation Once It Appears To Have Unending Losses In Prospect. Adam Smith Would Disagree With My First Proposition And Karl Marx Would Disagree With My Second; The Middle Ground Is The Only Position That Leaves Me Comfortable.

Consciously Paying More For A Stock Than Its Calculated Value - In The Hope That It Can Soon Be Sold For A Still-higher Price - Should Be Labelled Speculation

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

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

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

When The Brothel Burns Down, Even The Pretty Girls Have To Run Out.

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

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

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.

Diversification Is A Protection Against Ignorance. It Makes Very Little Sense For Those Who Know What They're Doing.

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

Buy A Cross Section Of American Industry, And If A Cross Section Of American Industry Doesn't Work, Certainly Trying To Pick The Little Beauties Here And There Isn't Going To Work Either.

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.

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

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

Investing Money

I Would Say The Biggest Single Cause Was We Had An Incredible Residential Real Estate Bubble.

Is Management Candid With The Shareholders?

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.

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.

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