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There Are Three Important Principles To Graham's Approach. [the First Is To Look At Stocks As Fractional Shares Of A Business, Which] Gives You An Entirely Different View Than Most People Who Are In The Market. [the Second Principle Is The Margin-of-safety Concept, Which] Gives You The Competitive Advantage. [the Third Is Having A True Investor's Attitude Toward The Stock Market, Which] If You Have That Attitude, You Start Out Ahead Of 99 Percent Of All The People Who Are Operating In The Stock Market - It's An Enormous Advantage.

-Warren Buffett

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There Are Three Important

Warren Buffett

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There Are Three Important Principles To Graham's Approach. [the First Is To Look At Stocks As Fractional Shares Of A Business, Which] Gives You An Entirely Different View Than Most People Who Are In The Market. [the Second Principle Is The Margin-of-safety Concept, Which] Gives You The Competitive Advantage. [the Third Is Having A True Investor's Attitude Toward The Stock Market, Which] If You Have That Attitude, You Start Out Ahead Of 99 Percent Of All The People Who Are Operating In The Stock Market - It's An Enormous Advantage.

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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.

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.

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

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.

It Is Better To Point Out Your Own Mistakes Than Have Somebody Else Do It.

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

[w]e Think The Very Term 'value Investing' Is Redundant. What Is 'investing' If It Is Not The Act Of Seeking Value At Least Sufficient To Justify The Amount Paid? 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 Labeled Speculation (which Is Neither Illegal, Immoral Nor -- In Our View -- Financially Fattening).

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

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

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

Focus On Return On Equity, Not Earnings Per Share.

We've Seen What Can Be Accomplished When We Use 50% Of Our Human Capacity. If You Visualize What 100% Can Do, You'll Join Me As An Unbridled Optimist About America's Future.

People Always Should Know Better. People Don't Get - They Don't Get Smarter About Things That Get As Basic As Greed.

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.

[people] Have Seen The Credit Market Seize Up. They're Worried About Money Market Funds, Although The Latest Proposition From Government Should Take Care Of That. They've Seen Eight Percent Of The Bank Deposits In The United States Get Moved Very Skillfully, I Might Say, Within The Last Couple Of Weeks From Institutions That They Thought Were Fine A Few Months Ago To Other Institutions. They Are Not Wrong To Be Worried.

I'll Tell You Why I Like The Cigarette Business. It Cost A Penny To Make. Sell It For A Dollar. It's Addictive. And There's A Fantastic Brand Loyalty.

It Makes No Difference To A Widow With Her Savings In A 5 Percent Passbook Account Whether She Pays 100 Percent Income Tax On Her Interest Income During A Period Of Zero Inflation Or Pays No Income Tax During Years Of 5 Percent Inflation. Either Way, She Is 'taxed' In A Manner That Leaves Her No Real Income Whatsoever. Any Money She Spends Comes Right Out Of Capital. She Would Find Outrageous A 100 Percent Income Tax But Doesn't Seem To Notice That 5 Percent Inflation Is The Economic Equivalent.

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.

Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?

If You Want To Shoot Rare, Fast-moving Elephants, You Should Always Carry A Loaded Gun.

Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.

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

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

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

Resolution Trust Company Was Set Up To Liquidate A Bunch Of Assets That The Government Had Inherited Because The Savings And Loans Went Broke.

Confidence In Markets And In Institutions, It's A Lot Like Oxygen. When You Have It, You Don't Even Think About It. It's Indispensable. You Can Go Years Without Thinking About It. When It's Gone For Five Minutes, It's The Only Thing To Think About.

Personally, I Really Hope I Can Treat Everyone Equally. I Think I Have Done A Pretty Good Job So Far But I Know I Can Do It Better.

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.

Always Invest For The Long Term.

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

We Say We Are Trying To Buy Into Businesses With Excellent Economics, Run By Honest And Able People At A Decent Price. We Buy Very Few Securities, So We Look At It As "focused" Investing.

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 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.

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

Mass Destruction

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

I Have Got This Letter Which Actually Goes Out The Day After I Die. It Has Already Been Written. And It Says That: "yesterday I Died". And Then It Says: "that's Bad News For Me, But It's Not Bad News For You, The Shareholders Of Berkshire". And Then I Go On And Explain What Is Going To Happen. I Know That Is One Time When They Will Be Really Interested In Hearing From Me.

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.

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

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

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.

Well, It May Be All Right In Practice, But It Will Never Work In Theory

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.

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.

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

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

Money To Some Extent Sometimes Let You Be In More Interesting Environments. But It Can't Change How Many People Love You Or How Healthy You Are.

Derivatives Are Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

Over The Years, Charlie [munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] And I Have Observed Many Accounting-based Frauds Of Staggering Size. Few Of The Perpetrators Have Been Punished; Many Have Not Even Been Censured. It Has Been Far Safer To Steal Large Sums With Pen Than Small Sums With A Gun.

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

If You've Got A Good Enough Business, If You Have A Monopoly Newspaper, If You Have A Network Television Station - I'm Talking Of The Past - You Know, Your Idiot Nephew Could Run It. And If You've Got A Really Good Business, It Doesn't Make Any Difference.

So If You Are Evaluating Others (or Yourself!) In The Investment Field, Think Out Some Standards - Apply Them - Interpret Them.

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

... It's Important To Have The Right Monetary Policy. It's Important For, To Have The Right Fiscal Policy. But It's Nowhere Near As Important As Just The Normal Regenerative Capacity Of American Capitalism.

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

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

Who Would Think Of Buying Or Selling A Private Business Because Of Someone's Guess On The Stock Market? The Availability Of A Quotation For Your Business Interest (stock) Should Always Be An Asset To Be Utilized If Desired. If It Gets Silly Enough In Either Direction, You Take Advantage Of It. Its Availability Should Never Be Turned Into A Livability Whereby Its Periodic Aberrations In Turn Formulate Your Judgements.

Having A Large Amount Of Leverage Is Like Driving A Car With A Dagger On The Steering Wheel Pointed At Your Heart. If You Do That, You Will Be A Better Driver. There Will Be Fewer Accidents But When They Happen, They Will Be Fatal.

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

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

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.

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

People Who Watch Their Weight, Golf Scores, And Fuel Bills Seem To Shun Quantitative Evaluation Of Their Investment Management Skills Although It Involves The Most Important Client In The World-themselves.

Our Leaders Have Asked For “shared Sacrifice.” But When They Did The Asking, They Spared Me. I Checked With My Mega-rich Friends To Learn What Pain They Were Expecting. They, Too, Were Left Untouched.

We Simply Attempt To Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy And To Be Greedy Only When Others Are Fearful.

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.

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

Investment Success

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

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

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

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.

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.

I Don't Want To Hold Out False Hopes That The - By Some Magic Moment, That Things Will Turn Around In A Couple Months Because They Wouldn't, Charlie. I Mean, And It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People.

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.

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.

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.

No Matter How Great The Talent Or Efforts, Some Things Just Take Time.

Investing Money

It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People. They Will Turn Around.

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

Does The Business Have Favourable Long Term Prospects?

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.

No Formula In Finance Tells You That The Moat Is 28 Feet Wide And 16 Feet Deep. That's What Drives The Academics Crazy. They Can Compute Standard Deviations And Betas, But They Can't Understand Moats.

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

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.

The Value Of Market Esoterica To The Consumer Of Investment Advice Is A Different Story. In My Opinion, Investment Success Will Not Be Produced By Arcane Formulae, Computer Programs Or Signals Flashed By The Price Behavior Of Stocks And Markets. Rather 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.

Investment Success

Growth And Value Investing Are Joined At The Hip.

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.

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

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.

If You Can't Read The Scoreboard. You Don't Know The Score. If You Don't Know The Score, You Can't Tell The Winners From The Losers.

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

I Am A Huge Bull On This Country. We Will Not Have A Double-dip Recession At All. I See Our Businesses Coming Back Almost Across The Board.

Double Standard

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

In My Opinion, The Entire Field Of Investment Management, Involving Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars, Would Be More Satisfactorily Conducted If Everyone Had A Good Yardstick For Measurement Of Ability And Sensibly Applied It.

Every Day That Goes By, I Mean, If You Don't React To Pearl Harbor For A Week Or Two Weeks Or Three Weeks, You're Behind In The War That You Otherwise Would Have Fought.

I Have Always Cautioned Partners That I Considered Three Years A Minimum In Determining Whether We Were "performing".

I Read Annual Reports Of The Company I'm Looking At And I Read The Annual Reports Of The Competitors - That Is The Main Source Of Material.

I Just Think That - When A Country Needs More Income And We Do, We're Only Taking In 15 Percent Of Gdp, I Mean, That - That - When A Country Needs More Income, They Should Get It From The People That Have It.

Money Will Not Change How Healthy You Are Or How Many People Love You.

I Never Try To Predict The Market.

With A Wonderful Business, You Can Figure Out What Will Happen; You Can't Figure Out When It Will Happen. You Don't Want To Focus On When, You Want To Focus On What. If You're Right About What, You Don't Have To Worry About When

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

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

Investing Money

They [goverment] Take From The Woman Who Comes In And Takes The Wastebaskets Out.

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

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

Nevertheless, As Circumstances Presently Appear, I Feel Substantially Greater Size Is More Likely To Harm Future Results Than To Help Them. This Might Not Be True For My Own Personal Results, But It Is Likely To Be True For Your Results.

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.

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

While The Poor And Middle Class Fight For Us In Afghanistan, And While Most Americans Struggle To Make Ends Meet, We Mega-rich Continue To Get Our Extraordinary Tax Breaks.

With Each Investment You Make, You Should Have The Courage And The Conviction To Place At Least Ten Per Cent Of Your Net Worth In That Stock

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

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.

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.

In That, We Agreed With Andrew Carnegie, Who Said That Huge Fortunes That Flow In Large Part From Society Should In Large Part Be Returned To Society. In My Case, The Ability To Allocate Capital Would Have Had Little Utility Unless I Lived In A Rich, Populous Country In Which Enormous Quantities Of Marketable Securities Were Traded And Were Sometimes Ridiculously Mispriced. And Fortunately For Me, That Describes The U.s. In The Second Half Of The Last Century.

Enormous Quantities

Valuing A Business Is Part Art And Part Science.

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.

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'm Just Lucky To Have Been In The Right Place At The Right Time. Another Place, Another Time, I Wouldn't Have Been As Successful. Society Enabled Me To Make My Money And My Money Should Go To Society.

If You Lose Money For The Firm, I Will Be Forgiving. If You Lose Reputation, I Will Be Ruthless.

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

Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

Investment Success

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.

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

I Have No Idea On Timing. It’s Easier To Tell What Will Happen Than When It Will Happen. I Would Say That What Is Going On In Terms Of Trade Policy Is Going To Have Very Important Consequences.

If You Don't Feel Comfortable Owning Something For 10 Years, Then Don't Own It For 10 Minutes.

Read Ben Graham And Phil Fisher Read Annual Reports, But Don't Do Equations With Greek Letters In Them.

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

Do Not Take Yearly Results Too Seriously. Instead, Focus On Four Or Five-year Averages.

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

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Whatever You Like To Do, Make It A Hobby And Whatever The World Likes To Do, Make It A Business.

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

If You Don’t Feel Comfortable Making A Rough Estimate Of The Asset’s Future Earnings, Just Forget It And Move On. No One Has The Ability To Evaluate Every Investment Possibility. But Omniscience Isn’t Necessary; You Only Need To Understand The Actions You Undertake.

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

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

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.

To Be Successful, You Should Concentrate On The World Of Companies, Not Arcane Accounting Mathematics.

If You Knew What Was Going To Happen In The Economy, You Still Wouldn't Necessarily Know What Was Going To Happen In The Stock Market.

Good Profits Simply Are Not Inconsistent With Good Behavior.

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.

When You Get To My Age, You’ll Measure Your Success In Life By How Many Of The People You Want To Have Love You Actually Do Love You. That’s The Ultimate Test Of How You’ve Lived Your Life.

Wild Swings In Share Prices Have More To Do With The "lemming- Like" Behaviour Of Institutional Investors Than With The Aggregate Returns Of The Company They Own.

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.

Getting Fired Can Produce A Particularly Bountiful Payday For A Ceo. Indeed, He Can 'earn' More In That Single Day, While Cleaning Out His Desk, Than An American Worker Earns In A Lifetime Of Cleaning Toilets. Forget The Old Maxim About Nothing Succeeding Like Success: Today, In The Executive Suite, The All-too-prevalent Rule Is That Nothing Succeeds Like Failure.

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 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 Do Not View The Company Itself As The Ultimate Owner Of Our Business Assets But Instead View The Company As A Conduit Through Which Our Shareholders Own Assets.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

We've Long Felt That The Only Value Of Stock Forecasters Is To Make Fortune Tellers Look Good. Even Now, Charlie And I Continue To Believe That Short-term Market Forecasts Are Poison And Should Be Kept Locked Up In A Safe Place, Away From Children And Also From Grown-ups Who Behave In The Market Like Children.

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

Investment Decision Should Be Made On The Basis Of The Most Probable Compounding Of After-tax Net Worth With Minimum Risk.

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

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.

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

Exercise Humility And Restraint.

Outstanding Long-term Results Are Produced Primarily By Avoiding Dumb Decisions, Rather Than By Making Brilliant Ones.

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

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've Never Been Very Fully Employed Either.

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

By Periodically Investing In An Index Fund, The Know-nothing Investors Can Actually Outperform Most Investment Professionals.

You Do Things When The Opportunities Come Along. I've Had Periods In My Life When I've Had A Bundle Of Ideas Come Along, And I've Had Long Dry Spells. If I Get An Idea Next Week, I'll Do Something. If Not, I Won't Do A Damn Thing.

Investing Money

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.

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

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.

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.

The Active Investors Will Have Their Returns Diminished By A Far Greater Percentage Than Will Their Inactive Brethren. That Means That The Passive Group - The "know-nothings" - Must Win.

What An Investor Needs Is The Ability To Correctly Evaluate Selected Businesses. Note That Word “selected”: You Don't Have To Be An Expert On Every Company, Or Even Many. You Only Have To Be Able To Evaluate Companies Within Your Circle Of Competence. The Size Of That Circle Is Not Very Important; Knowing Its Boundaries, However, Is Vital.

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.

Part Of Making Good Decisions In Business Is Recognizing The Poor Decisions You've Made And Why They Were Poor. I've Made Lots Of Mistakes. I'm Going To Make More. It's The Name Of The Game. You Don't Want To Expect Perfection In Yourself. You Want To Strive To Do Your Best. It's Too Demanding To Expect Perfection In Yourself.

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

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.

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

You Should Invest Like A Catholic Marries: For Life.

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.

The Smartest Side To Take In A Bidding War Is The Losing Side.

All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

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

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

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

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

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

I Asked Him What He Wanted To Do For His Career, And He Replied That He Wanted To Go Into A Particular Field, But Thought He Should Work For Mckinsey For A Few Years First To Add To His Resume. To Me That's Like Saving Sex For Your Old Age. It Makes No Sense.

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