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I’ve Worked In An Economy That Rewards Someone Who Saves The Lives Of Others On A Battlefield With A Medal, Rewards A Great Teacher With Thank-you Notes From Parents, But Rewards Those Who Can Detect The Mispricing Of Securities With Sums Reaching Into The Billions.

-Warren Buffett

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I’ve Worked In An

Warren Buffett

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I’ve Worked In An Economy That Rewards Someone Who Saves The Lives Of Others On A Battlefield With A Medal, Rewards A Great Teacher With Thank-you Notes From Parents, But Rewards Those Who Can Detect The Mispricing Of Securities With Sums Reaching Into The Billions.

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

The Most Important Thing In Terms Of Your Circle Of Competence Is Not How Large The Area Of It Is, But How Well You've Defined The Perimeter.

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

A Lot Of Great Fortunes In The World Have Been Made By Owning A Single Wonderful Business. If You Understand The Business, You Don't Need To Own Very Many Of Them.

They Say The Chains Of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken. The Chains You Put Around Yourself Now Have Enormous Consequences As You Go Through Life.

The Capital Gains Tax Is 15 Percent Now. So I Sit There In My Office And I Make A Lot Of Money By Capital Gains, And I Pay 15 Percent, And I Pay No Payroll Tax On It.

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

It's Better To Hang Out With People Better Than You. Pick Out Associates Whose Behavior Is Better Than Yours And You'll Drift In That Direction.

All I Have To Do Is Think And Not Be Influenced By Others.

There Is No Staff. I Make All The Investment Decisions And I Do All My Own Analysis.

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.

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

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.

Uncertainty Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long Term Values.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Have No Views As To Where It Will Be, But The One Thing I Can Tell You Is It Won't Do Anything Between Now And Then Except Look At You. Whereas, You Know, Coca-cola (ko) Will Be Making Money, And I Think Wells Fargo (wfc) Will Be Making A Lot Of Money And There Will Be A Lot - And It's A Lot - It's A Lot Better To Have A Goose That Keeps Laying Eggs Than A Goose That Just Sits There And Eats Insurance And Storage And A Few Things Like That.

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.

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

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

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

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

Executive Compensation

If I Got Any Good Ideas Out Of That Or I Think They're Good Ideas, I'll Be Glad To Contribute Them But The System Will Probably Overdo Some Other Things.

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.

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.

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

Charlie [munger] And I Are Not Big Fans Of Resumes. Instead, We Focus On Brains, Passion And Integrity.

Well, I Think The Biggest Mistake Is Not Learning The Habits Of Saving Properly Early. Because Saving Is A Habit. And Then, Trying To Get Rich Quick. It's Pretty Easy To Get Well-to-do Slowly. But It's Not Easy To Get Rich Quick.

Investing Is The Greatest Business In The World Because You Never Have To Swing. You Stand At The Plate; The Pitcher Throws You General Motors At 47! U.s. Steel At 39! And Nobody Calls A Strike On You. There's No Penalty Except Opportunity. All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then, When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

We Do Not Have, Nor Have Had, And Never Will Have An Opinion About Where The Stock Market, Interest Rates, Or Business Activity Will Be A Year From Now.

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

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.

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 Want 300 Million Americans Putting Their Money Under The Mattress.

In The End We Must Have People To Match Our Principles, Not The Reverse.

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

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.

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

I Have Pledged - To You, The Rating Agencies And Myself - To Always Run Berkshire With More Than Ample Cash. We Never Want To Count On The Kindness Of Strangers In Order To Meet Tomorrow's Obligations. When Forced To Choose, I Will Not Trade Even A Night's Sleep For The Chance Of Extra Profits.

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

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

Investing Is Not As Tough As Being A Top-notch Bridge Player. All It Takes Is The Ability To See Things As They Really Are.

Investors Should Be Skeptical Of History-based Models. Constructed By A Nerdy-sounding Priesthood Using Esoteric Terms Such As Beta, Gamma, Sigma And The Like, These Models Tend To Look Impressive. Too Often, Though, Investors Forget To Examine The Assumptions Behind The Models. Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

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.

I Always Knew I Was Going To Be Rich. I Don't Think I Ever Doubted It For A Minute.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm Happy When I Can Spend Every Day Doing The Things That I Like To Do. That's My Luxury.

When The President Of The United States Goes Out At, You Know, 8:00 O'clock In The Morning And Then His Own Party Votes Gets Him 2 To 1 In The House, You Know That Somehow A Message Isn't Getting Out. It Takes Real Leadership.

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

I Do Not Believe In Inheriting Your Position In Society Based On Which Womb You Come From... I Think A Rich Person Should Leave His Children Enough So They Can Do Anything, But Not Enough So They Can Do Nothing.

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.

The Financial Calculus That Charlie And I Employ Would Never Permit Our Trading A Good Night's Sleep For A Shot At A Few Extra Percentage Points Of Return. I've Never Believed In Risking What My Friends And Family Have And Need In Order To Pursue What They Don't Have And Don't Need.

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.

The Latter Qualification Brings To Mind A Fellow Who Applied For A Job And Stated He Had Twenty Years Of Experience-which Was Corrected By A Former Employer To Read "one Year's Experience-twenty Times.

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

The Best Way In My View Is To Just Buy A Low-cost Index Fund And Keep Buying It Regularly Over Time, Because You'll Be Buying Into A Wonderful Industry, Which In Effect Is All Of American Industry... People Ought To Sit Back And Relax And Keep Accumulating Over Time.

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.

Of Our 49 Billion, We Haven't Moved Any To Bitcoin

I Think You Should Read Everything You Can. In My Case, By The Age Of 10, I'd Read Every Book In The Omaha Public Library About Investing, Some Twice. You Need To Fill Your Mind With Various Competing Thoughts And Decide Which Make Sense.

I Have Three Boxes On My Desk: In, Out, And Too Hard.

If We Start Deciding, Based On Guesses Or Emotions, Whether We Will Or Won't Participate In A Business Where We Should Have Some Long Run Edge, We're In Trouble.

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

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 Think It's Been, You Know, Kind Of Like A Tragic Play To This Point. But At This Point, I Think It's Clear, And Will Be Clear To The Majority Of The Congress. I Think It's Clear To The American People That There Is Only One Countervailing Force To A World Where Financial Institutions Are Trying To Sell Instruments Every Day And Where Credit Has Dried Up, And That's The United States Treasury.

The Key To Success Is Emotional Stability.

If You're An Investor, You're Looking On What The Asset Is Going To Do, If You're A Speculator, You're Commonly Focusing On What The Price Of The Object Is Going To Do, And That's Not Our Game.

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

Most Investors, Both Institutional And Individual, Will Find That The Best Way To Own Common Stocks (shares') Is Through An Index Fund That Charges Minimal Fees. Those Following This Path Are Sure To Beat The Net Results (after Fees And Expenses) Of The Great Majority Of Investment Professionals.

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

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

Somebody's Buying These Treasury Bills At 1/20th Of One Percent. Consuming About $2 Billion A Day Of Goods And Services Beyond What We're Producing. In Other Words, The Rest Of The World Sends About $2 Billion A Day Net Of Something.we Got To Send Them Something In Return, Don't We. So We Send Them Little Pieces Of Paper.

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.

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

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.

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

The Key To Life Is To Figure Out Who To Be The Batboy For.

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.

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

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

I Mean, In Terms Of Alternatives, Some People Have Suggested For Example That Why Don't We - Why Isn't America Doing What Berkshire Hathaway Is Doing? Why Isn't That A Better Deal For America?

You Do Not Adequately Protect Yourself By Being Half Awake When Other Are Sleeping.

It's A Good Idea To Review Past Mistakes Before Committing New Ones.

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

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

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

Investing Money

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.

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

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

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

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

Time Is Your Friend, Impulse Is Your Enemy. Take Advantage Of Compound Interest And Don't Be Captivated By The Siren Song Of The Market.

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

Active Management

Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?

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.

Investors Should Remember That Their Scorecard Is Not Computed Using Olympic-diving Methods: Degree-of-difficulty Doesn't Count. If You Are Right About A Business Whose Value Is Largely Dependent On A Single Key Factor That Is Both Easy To Understand And Enduring, The Payoff Is The Same As If You Had Correctly Analyzed An Investment Alternative Characterized By Many Constantly Shifting And Complex Variables.

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

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

I Think You Are Out Of Your Mind If You Keep Taking Jobs That You Don't Like Because You Think It Will Look Good On Your Resume. Isn't That A Little Like Saving Up Sex For Your Old Age?

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

House Prices Just Soared Beyond - Beyond Reason In Many Places And They Got Financed In Silly Ways, And People Lied About Loans, All Kinds Of Accesses Entered Into It. But That Is What - That Is The Single Biggest Cause Of Why We're Here.

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

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.

The Plan Itself Is Opportunism. There Is No Plan Before That.

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.

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

Don't Pass Up Something That's Attractive Today Because You Think You Will Find Something Way More Attractive Tomorrow.

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

Take The High Road; It's Far Less Crowded.

Taking The High Road

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.

One Of The Ironies Of The Stock Market Is The Emphasis On Activity. Brokers, Using Terms Such As 'marketability' And 'liquidity,' Sing The Praises Of Companies With High Share Turnover... But Investors Should Understand That What Is Good For The Croupier Is Not Good For The Customer. A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pick Pocket Of Enterprise.

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

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

Unconditional Love

You Know, People Talk About This Being An Uncertain Time. You Know, All Time Is Uncertain. I Mean, It Was Uncertain Back In - In 2007, We Just Didn't Know It Was Uncertain. It Was - Uncertain On September 10th, 2001. It Was Uncertain On October 18th, 1987, You Just Didn't Know It.

Uncertain Times

Diversification May Preserve Wealth, But Concentration Builds Wealth.

Concentration Of Wealth

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

If You Hit A Hole In One Every Hole, You Wouldn’t Play Golf For Very Long.

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

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.

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.

A Ceo's Behavior Has A Huge Impact On Managers Down The Line.

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

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

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

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'm The Luckiest Guy In The World In Terms Of What I Do For A Living. No One Can Tell Me To Do Things I Don't Believe In Or Things I Think Are Stupid.

Just Look At That Forbes 400. Takes A Billion Three To Get On The Forbes 400 This Year. And The Aggregate Wealth Is Just Staggering. And Those People Are Paying Less Percentage Of Their Total Income To The Federal Government Than Their Receptionists Are. [...] I'll Bet A Million Dollars Against Any Member Of The Forbes 400 Who Challenges - Me That The Average For The Forbes 400 Will Be Less Than The Average Of Their Receptionists.

I Think You'll Have Plenty Of Scrutiny As How The Money's Invested. I Mean, Just Like The Rfc. When The Rfc Operated, People Knew Which Institutions They Were Buying Preferred Stock In. And It Worked Very Well.

Our System Works. Over Time, People Will Live Better And Better. We Have A System That Unleashes Human Potential, And Now China Has A System That Unleashes Human Potential. We Will Have Interruptions. We Overshoot And Undershoot Sometimes, But Your Kids And Grandkids Will Live Better Than You. Over Time, We Move Ahead At A Pretty Damn Rapid Rate.

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

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

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

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.

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

If You Want A Government That's Going To Do The Things We Ask Our Government To Do, You've Got To Get It From Somebody.

When We Really Sit Back With A Smile On Our Face Is When We Run Into A Situation We Can Understand, Where The Facts Are Ascertainable And Clear, And The Course Of Action Obvious.

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

Successful Investing

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

Does Management Resist The Institutional Imperative?

We've Used Up A Lot Of Bullets. And We Talk About Stimulus. But The Truth Is, We're Running A Federal Deficit That's 9 Percent Of Gdp. That Is Stimulative As All Get Out. It's More Stimulative Than Any Policy We've Followed Since World War Ii.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let Blockheads Read What Blockheads Wrote.

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

American Workers

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.

When Investing, Pessimism Is Your Friend, Euphoria The Enemy.

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

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

The Time To Buy Stocks Is Consistently Over Time. You Should Never Buy Your Investments With The Idea, 'i Have To Get A Certain Return.' You Should Look At The Best Return Possible And Learn To Live With That. But You Should Not Try To Make Your Investments Earn What You Feel You Need. It Doesn't Work That Way. The Stock Doesn't Know You Own It.

This Country Is Going - Be Living Better Ten Years From Now Than It Is Now. It Will Be Living Better In 20 Years From Now Than Ten Years From Now. The Ingredients That Made This Country, You Know, The Miracle Of The World - I Mean We Had A Seven For One Improvement In The Average American Standard Of Living In The 20th Century.

Our Investments Continue To Be Few In Number And Simple In Concept: The Truly Big Investment Idea Can Usually Be Explained In A Short Paragraph. We Like A Business With Enduring Competitive Advantages That Is Run By Able And Owner-oriented People. When These Attributes Exist, And When We Can Make Purchases At Sensible Prices, It Is Hard To Go Wrong (a Challenge We Periodically Manage To Overcome).

There's Always A Mismatch. I Mean, You Know, As The Economy Evolves, It Reallocates Resources. Now, The Real Problem, In My View, Is - This Has Been - The Prosperity Has Been Unbelievable For The Extremely Rich People. If You Go To 1982, When Forbes Put On Their First 400 List, Those People Had $93 Billion. They Now They Have $2.4 Trillion, 25 For One. That Is - This Has Been A Prosperity That's Been Disproportionately Rewarding To The People On Top.

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

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

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

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.

Of One Thing Be Certain: If A Ceo Is Enthused About A Particularly Foolish Acquisition, Both His Internal Staff And His Outside Advisors Will Come Up With Whatever Projections Are Needed To Justify His Stance. Only In Fairy Tales Are Emperors Told That They Are Naked.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

When You Combine Ignorance And Leverage, You Get Some Pretty Interesting Results.

Investing Money

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.

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

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

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.

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.

The Most Important Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself. Very Few People Get Anything Like Their Potential Horsepower Translated Into The Actual Horsepower Of Their Output In Life. Potential Exceeds Realization For Many People...the Best Asset Is Your Own Self. You Can Become To An Enormous Degree The Person You Want To Be.

Charlie And I Have A Number Of Filters That Things Have To Get Through Before We'll Think About Them.

... Not Doing What We Love In The Name Of Greed Is Very Poor Management Of Our Lives.

Investment Success

You Should Invest Like A Catholic Marries: For Life.

If You Don't Find A Way To Make Money While You Sleep, You Will Work Until You Die.

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

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

Valuing A Business Is Part Art And Part Science.

The Fed Is The Greatest Hedge Fund In History.

There Is One Thing Of Which I Can Assure You. If Good Performance Of The Fund Is Even A Minor Objective, Any Portfolio Encompassing One Hundred Stocks (whether The Manager Is Handling One Thousand Dollars Or One Billion Dollars) Is Not Being Operated Logically. The Addition Of The One Hundredth Stock Simply Can't Reduce The Potential Variance In Portfolio Performance Sufficiently To Compensate For The Negative Effect Its Inclusion Has On The Overall Portfolio Expectation.

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

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.

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

To Win, The First Thing You Have To Do Is Not Lose.

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

The Secret To Happiness Is Having Low Expectations.

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

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

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James Anthony Froude

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