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Our Approach Is Very Much Profiting From Lack Of Change Rather Than From Change. With Wrigley Chewing Gum, It's The Lack Of Change That Appeals To Me. I Don't Think It Is Going To Be Hurt By The Internet. That's The Kind Of Business I Like.

-Warren Buffett

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Our Approach Is Very

Warren Buffett

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Our Approach Is Very Much Profiting From Lack Of Change Rather Than From Change. With Wrigley Chewing Gum, It's The Lack Of Change That Appeals To Me. I Don't Think It Is Going To Be Hurt By The Internet. That's The Kind Of Business I Like.

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In The Search [of A Deal], We Adopt The Same Attitude One Might Find Appropriate In Looking For A Spouse: It Pays To Be Active, Interested, And Open-minded, But It Does Not Pay To Be In A Hurry.

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 Never Try To Predict The Market.

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

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

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

Tell Me Your Heroes And I'll Tell You How Your Life Will End Up

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

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.

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

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

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.

It's A Nightmare To Administer Some Of This Sort Of Thing, But I Want To Tell The Shareholders Of Berkshire, To The Percent We Own Marketable Securities Or Things For Which There Are Market, Even If Those Markets - I Want To Tell Them What It's All About.

The Value Of A Business Is The Cash It's Going To Produce In The Future.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Optimum Portfolio Depends On The Various Expectations Of Choices Available And The Degree Of Variance In Performance Which Is Tolerable. The Greater The Number Of Selections, The Less Will Be The Average Year-to-year Variation In Actual Versus Expected Results. Also, The Lower Will Be The Expected Results, Assuming Different Choices Have Different Expectations Of Performance.

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.

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

I Don't Try And Guess When To Get In And Out Of The Market. I Have Owned Stocks Consistently Since 1942. I Owned The - I Was Buying Stocks The Day Before The Election. I Was Buying The Same Stocks The Day After Election. And If Hillary Had Been Elected, It Would Have Been The Same Thing.

It's Better To Build Than To Buy If You Can Find The Right People.

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

Doing What You Love

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

It Is Easier To Rationalize Than It Is To Be Rational.

A Very Rich Person Should Leave His Kids Enough To Do Anything, But Not Enough To Do Nothing.

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

Investing Money

Investing Is Laying Out Money Now To Get More Money Back In The Future.

I Do Not Like Debt And Do Not Like To Invest In Companies That Have Too Much Debt, Particularly Long-term Debt. With Long-term Debt, Increases In Interest Rates Can Drastically Affect Company Profits And Make Future Cash Flows Less Predictable.

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

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.

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.

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

As Of 1992, In Fact-though The Picture Would Have Improved Since Then-the Money That Had Been Made Since The Dawn Of Aviation By All Of This Country's Airline Companies Was Zero. Absolutely Zero.

Airline Business

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?

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.

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

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

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

But 300 Million Americans, Their Lending Institutions, Their Government, Their Media, All Believed That House Prices Were Going To Go Up Consistently. And That Got Billed Into A $20 Trillion Residential Home Market. Lending Was Done Based On It, And Everybody Did A Lot Of Foolish Things.

Wall Street Is The Only Place That People Ride To In A Rolls Royce To Get Advice From Those Who Take The Subway.

Investing Money

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

None Of This Means, However, That A Business Or Stock Is An Intelligent Purchase Simply Because It Is Unpopular; A Contrarian Approach Is Just As Foolish As A Follow-the-crowd Strategy. What's Required Is Thinking Rather Than Polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's Observation About Life In General Applies With Unusual Force In The Financial World: "most Men Would Rather Die Than Think. Many Do."

We Have Embraced The 21st Century By Entering Such Cutting-edge Industries As Brick, Carpet, Insulation And Paint. Try To Control Your Excitement.

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

I Put Heavy Weight On Certainty. It's Not Risky To Buy Securities At A Fraction Of What They're Worth.

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've Never Been Very Fully Employed Either But Just Think Of What It's Like, You Know, To Go Home With A Mortgage Payment You Know And Kids And Everything Else. My Dad Had That Happen To Him In The Early '30s.

Buy Stocks Like You Buy Your Groceries, Not Like You Buy Your Perfume.

People Went Crazy With Tulip Bulbs. They Went Crazy With The South Sea Bubble, They Went Crazy Internet Stocks, They Went Crazy With The Uranium Stocks Back When I Was First Getting Started.

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

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

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

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

The Truth Is, Everything That Has Happened In My Life... That I Thought Was A Crushing Event At The Time, Has Turned Out For The Better.

My Idea Of A Group Decision Is To Look In The Mirror.

We Would Do Best In A Market Where Everyone Acted Foolishly.

The Speed At Which A Business Success Is Recognized, Furthermore, Is Not That Important As Long As The Company's Intrinsic Value Is Increasing At A Satisfactory Rate. In Fact, Delayed Recognition Can Be An Advantage: It May Give Us The Chance To Buy More Of A Good Thing At A Bargain Price.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Mental Toughness

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

The 19th Century Belonged To England, The 20th Century Belonged To The U.s., And The 21st Century Belongs To China. Invest Accordingly.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

We Want To Use Cash. The Reason We Haven't Used Our Cash Two Years Ago, We Just Didn't Find Things That Were That Attractive. But When People Talk About Cash Being King, It's Not King If It Just Sits There And Never Does Anything. There Are Times When Cash Buys More Than Other Times, And This Is One Of The Other Times When It Buys A Fair Amount More, So We Use It.

There Is Nothing Like Writing To Force You To Think And Get Your Thoughts Straight.

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

Forecasts May Tell You A Great Deal About The Forecaster; They Tell You Nothing About The Future.

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.

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.

If I Knew Where I Was Going To Want To Live The Next Five Or 10 Years I Would Buy A Home And I'd Finance It With A 30-year Mortgage... It's A Terrific Deal.

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

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.

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

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

I Certainly Have No Desire To Sell A Good Controlled Business Run By People I Like And Admire, Merely To Obtain A Fancy Price. However, Specific Conditions May Cause The Sale Of One Operating Unit At Some Point.

I've Never Been Very Fully Employed Either.

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

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

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.

Asset Values And Earning Power Are The Dominant Factors Affecting The Valuation Of A Controlling Interest In A Business. Market Price, Which Governs Valuation Of Minority Interest Positions, Is Of Little Or No Importance In Valuing A Controlling Interest.

My Favorite Time Frame For Holding A Stock Is Forever.

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.

The Secret To Happiness Is Having Low Expectations.

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

I Think The Congress Will Do The Right Thing. I Think That They've - You Know, They Got Into Certain Arguments And They Start Worrying About Assessing Blame, And There Is A Little Demagoguery, But In The End, Something This Important, They'll Do The Right Thing. So This Really Is An Economic Pearl Harbor. That Sounds Melodramatic, But I've Never Used That Phrase Before. And This Really Is One.

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

We've Got A Wonderful Economic Formula In This Country.

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.

Focus On Return On Equity, Not Earnings Per Share.

I Mean There Is No Capital Requirements To It Or Anything Of The Sort. And Basically, I Said There Were Possibly Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction, And They Had Them. They Destroyed Aig. They Certainly Contributed To The Destruction Of Bear Sterns And Lehman. Although Lehman Had Other Problems, Too.

Mass Destruction

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.

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

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

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.

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

Taking The High Road

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.

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.

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.

Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

Investment Success

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

We Will Continue To Ignore Political And Economic Forecasts, Which Are An Expensive Distraction For Many Investors And Businessmen. Thirty Years Ago, No One Could Have Foreseen The Huge Expansion Of The Vietnam War, Wage And Price Controls, Two Oil Shocks, The Resignation Of A President, The Dissolution Of The Soviet Union, A One-day Drop In The Dow Of 508 Points, Or Treasury Bill Yields Fluctuating Between 2.8% And 17.4%.

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

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

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.

Activity Is The Enemy Of Investment Returns.

We Have Learned To Turn Out Lots Of Goods And Services, But We Haven't Learned As Well How To Have Everybody Share In The Bounty. The Obligation Of A Society As Prosperous As Ours Is To Figure Out How Nobody Gets Left Too Far Behind.

I Would Say The Most Satisfying Thing Actually Is Watching My Three Children Each Pick Up On Their Own Interests And Work Many More Hours Per Week Than Most People That Have Jobs At Trying To Intelligently Give Away That Money In Fields That They Particularly Care About.

It's Class Warfare, My Class Is Winning, But They Shouldn't Be.

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

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

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.

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.

I Have Never Been Able To Understand Why The Tax Comes As Such A Body Blow To Many People Since The Rate On Long-term Capital Gain Is Lower Than On Most Likes Of Endeavor (tax Policy Indicated Digging Ditches Is Regarded As Socially Less Desirable Than Shuffling Stock Certificates).

...i Will Give You Two Pieces Of Advice. Invest As Much In Yourself As You Can; You Are Your Own Best Asset By Far. Then Follow Your Passion; You Want To Be Really Excited To Get Out Of Bed Every Morning.

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.

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.

Focus Alone Is Not Enough; Putting In The Time To Commit Is Also Crucial To Achieve Success.

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.

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

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

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

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

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. The Upshot Is That A Mediocre-or-worse Ceo - Aided By His Handpicked Vp Of Human Relations And A Consultant From The Ever-accommodating Firm Of Ratchet, Ratchet And Bingo - All Too Often Receives Gobs Of Money From An Ill-designed Compensation Arrangement.

And People Really Behaved In A Fraudulent Way Or Something, We'll Go Back And Find The Culprits Later On. But That Really Isn't The Problem We Have. I Mean That's Where It Came From, Though. We Leveraged Up And If You Have A 20 Percent Fall In Value Of A $20 Trillion Asset, That's $4 Trillion. And When $4 Trillion Lands - Losses Land In The Wrong Part Of This Economy, It Can Gum Up The Whole Place.

The Best Thing I Did Was Choose The Right Heroes.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

There Are 309 Million People Out There That Are Trying To Improve Their Lot In Life. And We've Got A System That Allows Them To Do It.

One’s Objective Should Be To Get It Right, Get It Quick, Get It Out And Get It Over. Your Problem Won’t Improve With Age.

I Mean The Truth Is, I've Never Had It So Good In Terms Of Taxes. I Am Paying The Lowest Tax Rate That I've Ever Paid In My Life.

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.

I Tell College Students, When You Get To Be My Age You Will Be Successful If The People Who You Hope To Have Love You, Do Love You.

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.

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.

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.

You Ought To Be Able To Explain Why You’re Taking The Job You’re Taking, Why You’re Making The Investment You’re Making, Or Whatever It May Be. And If It Can’t Stand Applying Pencil To Paper, You’d Better Think It Through Some More. And If You Can’t Write An Intelligent Answer To Those Questions, Don’t Do It.

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

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.

The Extraordinary Business Does Not Require Good Management.

Whether We’re Talking About Socks Or Stocks, I Like Buying Quality Merchandise When It Is Marked Down.

Investing Money

That's Been Lost. It's A Huge Problem. What You Have Is You Have The Major Institutions Of The World All Wanting To Deleverage. They Want To Take Down Their Assets And Liabilities. What Seemed So Easy To Borrow Against A Year Ago Now Looks Like Rat Poison To Them. So They're Trying To Deleverage. There Is Only One Institution In The World That Can Leverage Up In A Way That's All A Countervailing Force To That, And That's The United States Treasury.

We Also Believe Candour Benefits Us As Managers. The Ceo Who Misleads Often In Public Eventually Misleads Himself In Private.

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.

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

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

In The 20th Century, The United States Endured Two World Wars And Other Traumatic And Expensive Military Conflicts; The Depression; A Dozen Or So Recessions And Financial Panics; Oil Shocks; A Flu Epidemic; And The Resignation Of A Disgraced President. Yet The Dow Rose From 66 To 11,497.

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

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.

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.

You Should Invest Like A Catholic Marries: For Life.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Inspirational Life

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

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

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.

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.

Failing Conventionally Is The Route To Go; As A Group, Lemmings May Have A Rotten Image, But No Individual Lemming Has Ever Received Bad Press

Investors, Of Course, Can, By Their Own Behavior Make Stock Ownership Highly Risky. And Many Do. Active Trading, Attempts To "time" Market Movements, Inadequate Diversification, The Payment Of High And Unnecessary Fees To Managers And Advisors, And The Use Of Borrowed Money Can Destroy The Decent Returns That A Life-long Owner Of Equities Would Otherwise Enjoy. Indeed, Borrowed Money Has No Place In The Investor's Tool Kit.

Great Investment Opportunities Come Around When Excellent Companies Are Surrounded By Unusual Circumstances That Cause The Stock To Be Misappraised.

The Only Time To Buy These Is On A Day With No 'y' In It.

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

Let Blockheads Read What Blockheads Wrote.

When You Listen To Tax-cut Rhetoric, Remember That Giving One Class Of Taxpayer A Break Requires - Now Or Down The Line - That An Equivalent Burden Be Imposed On Other Parties. In Other Words, If I Get A Break, Someone Else Pays. Government Can't Deliver A Free Lunch To The Country As A Whole. It Can However, Determine Who Pays For Lunch.

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

If You Have A Great Manager, You Want To Pay Him Very Well.

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

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.

Does The Business Have Favourable Long Term Prospects?

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