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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.

-Warren Buffett

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Somebody's Buying These Treasury

Warren Buffett

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

Never Get Too Hung Up On Mistakes.

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

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

Have Confidence

I Don't Think You Can Have A Better Secretary Of The Treasury Than Hank Paulson.

If This Is A War, My Side Has The Nuclear Bomb. We Have K Street. We Have Wall Street. Debbie Doesn't Have Anybody. I Want A Government That Is Responsive To The People Who Got The Short Straw In Life.

You Should Look At Stocks As Small Pieces Of Business.

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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.

We've Had Public Companies In The Past In That Business And They Bleed. We've Got A Lot More Blood Than They Do.

A Stock Doesn't Know That You Own It.

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.

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

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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.

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.

When I Take A Look At A Company's Annual Report, If I Don't Understand It, They Don't Want Me To Understand It.

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.

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

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If You Get To My Age In Life And Nobody Thinks Well Of You, I Don't Care How Big Your Bank Account Is, Your Life Is A Disaster.

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There Are Certain Things That Cannot Be Adequately Explained To A Virgin Either By Words Or Pictures.

Derivatives Are Like Sex. It's Not Who We're Sleeping With, It's Who They're Sleeping With That's The Problem.

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Investment Success

A Company Should Be Viewed As An Unfolding Movie, Not As A Still Photograph

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

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

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.

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

Working With People Who Cause Your Stomach To Churn Seems Much Like Marrying For Money - Probably A Bad Idea Under Any Circumstances, But Absolute Madness If You Are Already Rich.

Suppose That An Investor You Admire And Trust Comes To You With An Investment Idea. This Is A Good One, He Says Enthusiastically. I'm In It, And I Think You Should Be, Too.

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?

Growth And Value Investing Are Joined At The Hip.

If You Understood A Business Perfectly And The Future Of The Business, You Need Very Little In The Way Of A Margin Of Safety.

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.

Derivatives Are Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

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.

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

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

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

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

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