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That Would Be Nice If [people] Stuck [treasury Bills] All Under A Mattress, But They Got To Buy Something With Them. Sometimes They Buy A Treasury Note, Sometimes They Set Up Sovereign Wealth Funds. They Can Do All Kinds Of Things. They Can Buy Our Companies Here. As Long As We Consume More Than We Produce, And We Trade Away Little Pieces Of The Country Daily, They're Going To Own Something. Now, They Can't Run From American Assets. I Mean Every Day The Rest Of The World Is Going To Have About Two Billion More Of American Assets Than We Have, As Long As They Sell Us These Goods.

-Warren Buffett

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That Would Be Nice

Warren Buffett

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That Would Be Nice If [people] Stuck [treasury Bills] All Under A Mattress, But They Got To Buy Something With Them. Sometimes They Buy A Treasury Note, Sometimes They Set Up Sovereign Wealth Funds. They Can Do All Kinds Of Things. They Can Buy Our Companies Here. As Long As We Consume More Than We Produce, And We Trade Away Little Pieces Of The Country Daily, They're Going To Own Something. Now, They Can't Run From American Assets. I Mean Every Day The Rest Of The World Is Going To Have About Two Billion More Of American Assets Than We Have, As Long As They Sell Us These Goods.

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Activity Is The Enemy Of Investment Returns.

A Bull Market Is Like Sex. It Feels Best Just Before It Ends.

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

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

On His Giving Pledge Philanthropy: The Way I Got The Message Out Was To Get A Copy Of Forbes, Look Down That 400 List And Start Making Phone Calls! Bill And Melinda [gates] Did The Same Thing. So Keep Publishing The List So I Can Milk It.

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?

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

I've Made Money Over The Years By Buying Into Good Companies, Run By Good People, At Attractive Prices. And I Don't Try And Make It Out Of Buying Into The Market At One Point And Selling At Another Point.

Success In Investing Doesn’t Correlate With I.q. Once You Are Above The Level Of 25; Once You Have Ordinary Intelligence, What You Need Is The Temperament To Control The Urges That Get Other People Into Trouble In Investing.

The Thing To Do Is To Keep Your Mind When The World Around You Is Losing Theirs.

I Never Try To Predict The Market.

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

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If Some Institution Wants To Sell You A Billion Dollars Worth Of Mortgages, They Might Have To Sell 100 Million In The Market, And Then You'll Buy The Other 900 Million On The Same Terms. Now, The Very Fact That This Has Been Authorized Or Will Be Authorized, I Hope, Will Firm Up The Market To Some Degree. And That's Fine. But You Don't Want To Have Artificial Prices Being Paid.

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

I'll Take The Deal, Whatever You Want To Do.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Banking Is Very Good Business If You Don't Do Anything Dumb.

There Is Seldom Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen. You Know, You Turn On The Light And, All Of Sudden, They All Start Scurrying Around.

Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?

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

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

You’d Get Very Rich If You Thought Of Yourself As Having A Card With Only Twenty Punches In A Lifetime, And Every Financial Decision Used Up One Punch. You’d Resist The Temptation To Dabble. You’d Make More Good Decisions And You’d Make More Big Decisions.

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

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.

I've Never Been Very Fully Employed Either.

Never Get Too Hung Up On Mistakes.

I Mean, If Pearl Harbor Came Along, You Could Have Said The Planning Was Wrong By The Military Ahead Of Time Or Maybe The Battleships Shouldn't Have All Been In The Harbor And All That Kind Of Thing.

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

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

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

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 Knew A Lot About What I Did When I Was 20. I Had Read A Lot, And I Aspired To Learn Everything I Could About The Subject.

Investing Is Simple, But Not Easy.

In A Difficult Business, No Sooner Is One Problem Solved Than Another Surfaces - Never Is There Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen.

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

There's No Use Running If You're On The Wrong Road.

You Are Lucky In Life If You Have The Right Heroes. I Advise All Of You, To The Extent You Can, To Pick Out A Few Heroes

I Think The Oversight Is Great, And I Think That Oversight Ought To Be Devoted Almost Entirely To The Question Is This Being Done At Market You Know. In Other Words, You Want To Make Sure That The Government Isn't Investing Foolishly. But You Don't Want To Care About Which Congressional Districts It Goes To Or Whether Banks Get Favored Over.

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

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

Long Ago, Sir Isaac Newton Gave Us Three Laws Of Motion, Which Were The Work Of Genius. But Sir Isaac's Talents Didn't Extend To Investing: He Lost A Bundle In The South Sea Bubble, Explaining Later, 'i Can Calculate The Movement Of The Stars, But Not The Madness Of Men.' If He Had Not Been Traumatized By This Loss, Sir Isaac Might Well Have Gone On To Discover The Fourth Law Of Motion: For Investors As A Whole, Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

We Intend To Continue Our Practice Of Working Only With People Whom We Like And Admire. This Policy Not Only Maximizes Our Chances For Good Results, It Also Ensures Us An Extraordinarily Good Time.

We Really Can Say No In 10 Seconds Or So To 90%+ Of All The Things That Come Along Simply Because We Have These Filters.

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

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

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

You Know ... You Keep Doing The Same Things And You Keep Getting The Same Result Over And Over Again.

It Will Be Good For Us In The Long Run, And I Mean There Are, You Know, Six And A Half Billion People In This World. And It's Great For 300 Million To Keep Enjoying More And More Property, But I Think It's Terrific If, You Know, The Remainder Do.

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An Investor Will Succeed By Coupling Good Business Judgment With An Ability To Insulate His Thoughts And Behavior From The Super-contagious Emotions That Swirl About The Marketplace.

Asking For Financial Advice From A Financial Planner Is Like Asking A Barber If You Need A Hair Cut.

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

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

Aig Would Be Doing Fine Today. It Was One Of The Ten Largest Companies In The United States In Terms Of Market Value, Over 200 Billion, The Most Respected Insurer And Everything In The World.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Airline Business

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

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Traditional Wisdom Is Long On Tradition And Short On Wisdom.

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

The Banking Business Is No Favorite Of Ours. When Assets Are Twenty Times Equity - A Common Ratio In This Industry - Mistakes That Involve Only A Small Portion Of Assets Can Destroy A Major Portion Of Equity. And Mistakes Have Been The Rule Rather Than The Exception At Many Major Banks.

I Look For Businesses In Which I Think I Can Predict What They're Going To Look Like In Ten To Fifteen Years Time. Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

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Enjoy Your Work And Work For Whom You Admire.

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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.

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

Exercise Humility And Restraint.

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

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

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

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

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.

Stocks Are The Only Thing That People Are Happy To Buy When The Price Goes Up.

Two Rules: 1. Preserve The Principal 2. When In Doubt, See Rule #1.

It's Quite Clear That Stocks Are Cheaper Than Bonds. I Can't Imagine Anybody Having Bonds In Their Portfolio When They Can Own Equities, A Diversified Group Of Equities. But People Do Because They, The Lack Of Confidence. But That's What Makes For The Attractive Prices. If They Had Their Confidence Back, They Wouldn't Be Selling At These Prices. And Believe Me, It Will Come Back Over Time.

The Trick Is, When There Is Nothing To Do, Do Nothing.

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

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.

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.

Do Not Save What Is Left After Spending, But Spend What Is Left After Saving.

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.

So Some Guy May Know How To Make Money In Cocoa Beans, But I Don't So I Just Let Him Have That. But It's Got To Be Something I Understand. It's Got To Be A Business With Fundamentally Good Economics. It's Got To Be A Management That I Like And Trust And Admire. And It's Got To Be A Price That Makes Sense.

We Still Find Very Few [stocks] That Even Mildly Interest Us. That Dismal Fact Is Testimony To The Insanity Of Valuations Reached During The Great Bubble. Unfortunately, The Hangover May Prove To Be Proportional To The Binge.

I Want To Be Able To Explain My Mistakes. This Means I Do Only The Things I Completely Understand.

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.

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

The Range Of Derivatives Contracts Is Limited Only By The Imagination Of Man (or Sometimes, So It Seems, Madmen). Say You Want To Write A Contract Speculating On The Number Of Twins To Be Born In Nebraska In 2020. No Problem-at A Price, You Will Easily Find An Obliging Counterparty.

I Spend Twelve Hours A Week - A Little Over 10% Of My Waking Hours - Playing The Game. Now I Am Trying To Figure Out How To Get By On Less Sleep In Order To Fit In A Few More Hands.

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

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

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.

Much Success Can Be Attributed To Inactivity. Most Investors Cannot Resist The Temptation To Constantly Buy And Sell.

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.

Asset-heavy Businesses Generally Earn Low Rates Of Return - Rates That Often Barely Provide Enough Capital To Fund The Inflationary Needs Of The Existing Business, With Nothing Left Over For Real Growth, For Distribution To Owners, Or For Acquisition Of New Businesses

Look For Companies With High Profit Margins.

If You Owe Money, You Can't Pay Them Out. You Just Pay For Everything, You Do Smart Things, You Eventually Get Very Rich.

Money Will Always Flow Toward Opportunity, And There Is An Abundance Of That In America.

I Am Not In The Business Of Predicting General Stock Market Of Business Fluctuations. If You Think I Can Do This, Or Think It Is Essential To An Investment Program, You Should Not Be In The Partnership.

The Stock Market Is Designed To Transfer Money From The Active To The Patient.

Americans Are In A Cycle Of Fear Which Leads To People Not Wanting To Spend And Not Wanting To Make Investments, And That Leads To More Fear. We'll Break Out Of It. It Takes Time.

Our Future Rates Of Gain Will Fall Far Short Of Those Achieved In The Past. Berkshire's Capital Base Is Now Simply Too Large To Allow Us To Earn Truly Outsized Returns. If You Believe Otherwise, You Should Consider A Career In Sales But Avoid One In Mathematics.

It Is More Important To Say "no" To An Opportunity, Than To Say "yes".

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

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

Our Approach Is Very Much Profiting From Lack Of Change Rather Than From Change.

Investing Money

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

We Continue To Make More Money When Snoring Than When Active.

When Somebody Makes It Very Easy For You To Do It By Saying You Don't Really Have To Put Up My Money, You Can Lie About Your Income A Little, Or We'll Give You 100 Percent Mortgage, You're Going To Do It, Because Everybody That's Done It Has Been Proven Right. You Have Social Tools, And You're Going To Feel Like An Idiot If You Didn't Do It, Because The House Cost More.

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.

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.

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

Learn From Your Mistakes

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.

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

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

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

It's Us Fun Being A Horse When The Tractor Comes Along, Or The Blacksmith When The Car Comes Along.

I Find That The Standard Of Living Does Not Go Up In Proportion With The Cost Of Living. The Trick In Life Is To Do Things That Are Fun All The Time.

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

Government Can't Deliver A Free Lunch To The Country As A Whole. It Can, However, Determine Who Pays For Lunch. And Last Week The Senate Handed The Bill To The Wrong Party... The Poor And Middle Class.

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

Bad Terminology Is The Enemy Of Good Thinking.

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

You Don't Need To Be An Expert In Order To Achieve Satisfactory Investment Returns. But If You Aren't, You Must Recognize Your Limitations And Follow A Course Certain To Work Reasonably Well. Keep Things Simple And Don't Swing For The Fences.

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

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

I Am Out Of Step With Present Conditions. When The Game Is No Longer Played Your Way, It Is Only Human To Say The New Approach Is All Wrong, Bound To Lead To Trouble, And So On. On One Point, However, I Am Clear. I Will Not Abandon A Previous Approach Whose Logic I Understand ( Although I Find It Difficult To Apply ) Even Though It May Mean Foregoing Large, And Apparently Easy, Profits To Embrace An Approach Which I Don't Fully Understand, Have Not Practiced Successfully, And Which Possibly Could Lead To Substantial Permanent Loss Of Capital.

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

You Should Look At Stocks As Small Pieces Of Business.

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.

Turnarounds Seldom Turn.

Accounting Is The Language Of Business.

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

In The End, Alchemy, Whether It Is Metallurgical Or Financial, Fails. A Base Business Can Not Be Transformed Into A Golden Business By Tricks Of Accounting Or Capital Structure. The Man Claiming To Be A Financial Alchemist May Become Rich. But Gullible Investors Rather Than Business Achievements Will Usually Be The Source Of His Wealth.

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

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

I Like To Buy Things I Can Understand. I Do A Lot Of Research On Things.

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

Lethargy, Bordering On Sloth Should Remain The Cornerstone Of An Investment Style.

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

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.

I Mean [franklin Delano] Roosevelt Didn't - You Know, When He Came In, He Didn't Print Any Money.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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.

America Should Stand For More Than Just Wealth.

In The Insurance Business, There Is No Statute Of Limitation On Stupidity.

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

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

Investing Money

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

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.

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

For Example: (1) As If Governed By Newton's First Law Of Motion, An Institution Will Resist Any Change In Its Current Direction; (2) Just As Work Expands To Fill Available Time, Corporate Projects Or Acquisitions Will Materialize To Soak Up Available Funds; (3) Any Business Craving Of The Leader, However Foolish, Will Be Quickly Supported By Detailed Rate-of-return And Strategic Studies Prepared By His Troops; And (4) The Behavior Of Peer Companies, Whether They Are Expanding, Acquiring, Setting Executive Compensation Or Whatever, Will Be Mindlessly Imitated.

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'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.

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

Investment Success

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

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

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

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

Investment Success

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

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

Confidence Is Key. You're Not Going To Put Your Money - You're Not Going To Leave Your Money With Me Unless You're Confident I'm Going To Give It Back To You.

Confidence Is Key

I Think That Both Parties Should Declare The Debt Limit As A Political Weapon Of Mass Destruction Which Can't Be Used. I Mean, It Is Silly To Have A Country That Has 237 Years Building Up Its Reputation And Then Have People Threaten To Tear It Down Because They're Not Getting Some Other Matter.

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

Guarantees That

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.

I've Seen More People Fail Because Of Liquor And Leverage -- Leverage Being Borrowed Money. You Really Don't Need Leverage In This World Much. If You're Smart, You're Going To Make A Lot Of Money Without Borrowing.

Investing Money

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Investing Money

Let Blockheads Read What Blockheads Wrote.

A Low-cost Index Fund Is The Most Sensible Equity Investment For The Great Majority Of Investors. My Mentor, Ben Graham, Took This Position Many Years Ago, And Everything I Have Seen Since Convinces Me Of Its Truth.

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

I Mean, They Were Getting The Mortgage Of Some Guy In Omaha, You Know, Securitized A Couple Of Times. I Mean He Had All These - They Had All These Types From Wall Street, You Know, And They Had Advanced Degrees, And They Look Very Alert, And They Came With These - They Came With These Things That Said Gamma And Alpha And Sigma And All That. And All I Can Say Is Beware Of Geeks, You Know, Bearing Formulas. They've Heard That In Europe.

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 [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.

Diversification May Preserve Wealth, But Concentration Builds Wealth.

Concentration Of Wealth

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

The First Rule Is Not To Lose. The Second Rule Is Not To Forget The First Rule.

I Think The Most Important Factor In Getting Out Of The Recession Actually Is Just The Regenerative Capacity Of - Of American Capitalism.

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

The Key To Success Is Emotional Stability.

The Most Important Quality For An Investor Is Temperament, Not Intellect. You Need A Temperament That Neither Derives Great Pleasure From Being With The Crowd Or Against The Crowd.

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

When We Own Portions Of Outstanding Businesses With Outstanding Managements, Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Investing Money

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

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Harriet Van Horne

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