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When Berkshire Hathaway Laid Out Three Billion Dollars For Ge Today, We Didn't Spend It, We Invested It. When The Federal Government Buys The Mortgages, They're Not Spending It, They're Investing It. Now, They're Investing It In Distress Type Assets But They're Buying Them At Distress Prices If They Buy Them At Market. It's The Kind Of Stuff I Love To Do. I Just Don't Have 700 Million. Maybe We Could Go In It Together.

-Warren Buffett

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When Berkshire Hathaway Laid

Warren Buffett

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When Berkshire Hathaway Laid Out Three Billion Dollars For Ge Today, We Didn't Spend It, We Invested It. When The Federal Government Buys The Mortgages, They're Not Spending It, They're Investing It. Now, They're Investing It In Distress Type Assets But They're Buying Them At Distress Prices If They Buy Them At Market. It's The Kind Of Stuff I Love To Do. I Just Don't Have 700 Million. Maybe We Could Go In It Together.

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John Maynard Keynes Essentially Said, Don't Try And Figure Out What The Market Is Doing. Figure Out A Business You Understand, And Concentrate.

Traditional Wisdom Is Long On Tradition And Short On Wisdom.

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

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.

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

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

You’ve Gotta Keep Control Of Your Time, And You Can’t Unless You Say No. You Can’t Let People Set Your Agenda In Life.

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

Learn From Your Mistakes

An Irresistable Footnote: In 1971, Pension Fund Managers Invested A Record 122% Of Net Funds Available In Equities - At Full Prices They Couldn't Buy Enough Of Them. In 1974, After The Bottom Had Fallen Out, They Committed A Then Record Low Of 21% To Stocks.

I Think That Actually People In My Situation Should Be Paying More Tax.

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

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.

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.

Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.

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

Do What You Love And Work For Whom You Admire The Most, And You've Given Yourself The Best Chance In Life You Can.

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.

Forecasts Usually Tell Us More Of The Forecaster Than Of The Forecast

Of The Billionaires I Have Known, Money Just Brings Out The Basic Traits In Them. If They Were Jerks Before They Had Money, They Are Simply Jerks With A Billion Dollars.

Wide Diversification Is Only Required When Investors Do Not Understand What They Are Doing.

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

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'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.

I've Argued With The Senators And Congressmen I've Talked To. You Don't Want To Be Too Little Too Late. If You Buy Them At The Right Price, You May Be Buying Two Trillion Of Face Value.

A Fool And His Money Are Soon Invited Everywhere.

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

Investment Success

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

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.

An Argument Is Made That There Are Just Too Many Question Marks About The Near Future; Wouldn't It Be Better To Wait Until Things Clear Up A Bit? You Know The Prose: "maintain Buying Reserves Until Current Uncertainties Are Resolved," Etc. Before Reaching For That Crutch, Face Up To Two Unpleasant Facts: The Future Is Never Clear And You Pay A Very High Price For A Cheery Consensus. Uncertainty Actually Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long-term Values.

[the U.s. Treasury] Can Borrow Basically Unlimited Amounts. They Can Stay There For Years And Years. These Assets Will Be Worth More Money Over Time. So When Merrill Lynch Sells A Bunch Of Mortgage-related Assets At 22 Cents On The Dollar Like They Did A Month Or So Ago, The Buyer Goes - Is Going To Make Money, And He's Going To Make A Lot More Money If It Happens To Be An Institution Like The U.s. Government Which Has Very, Very Cheap Borrowing Costs.

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.

What The Wise Do In The Beginning, Fools Do In The End.

The Dominant Factors Affecting Control Valuations Are Earning Power (past And Prospective) And Asset Values.

You Should Look At Stocks As Small Pieces Of Business.

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.

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.

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

When You Build A Bridge, You Insist That It Can Carry 30,000 Pounds, But You Only Drive 10,000-pound Trucks Across It. And That Same Principle Works In Investing.

Mr. Market Is Your Servant, Not Your Guide.

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.

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

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You Can't Make A Good Deal With A Bad Person.

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.

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

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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.

First, Many In Wall Street - A Community In Which Quality Control Is Not Prized - Will Sell Investors Anything They Will Buy.

I Know What I Want To Do And It Makes Sense To Get Going.

When You're Associating With The People That You Love, Doing What You Love, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

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

You Have Hedge Funds And People Like That Buying These Assets To Yield 15 Or 20 Percent, I Mean, That's The Buyer For These People That Are Trying To Unload Them.

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

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In Investing, Just As In Baseball, To Put Runs On The Scoreboard, One Must Watch The Playing Field, Not The Scoreboard.

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Investing Your Time

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

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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

Ignore The Stock Market, Ignore The Economy, And Buy A Business You Understand.

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Investing Money

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.

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If You Gave Me The Choice Of Being Ceo Of General Electric Or Ibm Or General Motors, You Name It, Or Delivering Papers, I Would Deliver Papers. I Would. I Enjoyed Doing That. I Can Think About What I Want To Think. I Don't Have To Do Anything I Don't Want To Do.

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.

At Age 19, I Read A Book [the Intelligent Investor] And What I'm Doing Today, At Age 76, Is Running Things Through The Same Thought Process I Learned From The Book I Read At 19.

I Checked The Actuarial Tables, And The Lowest Death Rate Is Among Six-year-olds. So I Decided To Eat Like A Six-year-old.

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.

I Would Say It's More Important Who The Treasury Secretary Is Than Who The Vice President Is. If You Want To Have A Debate Here, I'd Like A Debate Between Potential Treasury Secretaries Than The Vice Presidential Debate.

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.

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

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

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.

What Motivates Most Gold Purchasers Is Their Belief That The Ranks Of The Fearful Will Grow ... As 'bandwagon' Investors Join Any Party, They Create Their Own Truth - For A While.

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.

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

I Have An 800 Freephone Number Now That I Call If I Get The Urge To Buy An Airline Stock. I Call At Two In The Morning And I Say: "my Name Is Warren And I'm An Aeroholic." And Then They Talk Me Down.

Only When The Tide Goes Out Do You Discover Who's Been Swimming Naked.

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 Try To Buy Stock In Businesses That Are So Wonderful That An Idiot Can Run Them. Because Sooner Or Later, One Will.

Investing Money

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

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

Invest In As Much Of Yourself As You Can, You Are Your Own Biggest Asset By Far.

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.

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

Investing Money

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.

If You Are Not Willing To Own A Stock For 10 Years, Do Not Even Think About Owning It For 10 Minutes.

Never Get Too Hung Up On Mistakes.

Wall Street Makes Its Money On Activity. You Make Your Money On Inactivity.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

It Is Unquestionably True That The Investment Companies Have Their Money More Conventionally Invested Than We Do. To Many People Conventionality Is Indistinguishable From Conservatism. In My View, This Represents Erroneous Thinking. Neither A Conventional Nor An Unconventional Approach, Per Se, Is Conservative.

It Is Impossible To Unsign A Contract, So Do All Your Thinking Before You Sign.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Intensity Is The Price Of Excellence.

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

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.

Mark Zuckerberg Will Be A Hero To Many Young Entrepreneurs 20 Years From Now. Bill Gates Will Be A Hero To Others, And They Will Look To Those [people] Like I Read Books When I Was In My Teens About Rockefeller Or Carnegie.

Young Entrepreneurs

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.

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.

My Rather Puritanical View Is That Any Investment Manager, Whether Operating As Broker, Investment Counselor Of A Trust Department, Investment Company, Etc., Should Be Willing To State Unequivocally What He Is Going To Attempt To Accomplish And How He Proposes To Measure The Extent To Which He Gets The Job Done.

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?

If You Do Smart Things And Use Leverage And Do One Wrong Thing Along The Way, It Could Wipe You Out, Because Anything Times Zero Is Zero. But It's Reinforcing When The People Around You Are Doing It Successfully, You're Doing It Successfully, And It's A Lot Like Cinderella At The Ball.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Typical Large Company Has A Compensation Committee, They Don't Look For Dobermans On That Committee, They Look For Chihuahuas.

We Always See Shifts In Employment. If You Think About It, If You Go Back To 1800, It Took 80 Percent Of The Labor Force To Produce Enough Food For The Country. Now It Takes Less Than 3 Percent. Well, The Truth Is That Market Systems Move People Around.

Investors... Can't Pick Stocks That Are Better Than Average. Stocks Are A Good Thing To Own Over Time. There's Only Two Things You Can Do Wrong: You Can Buy The Wrong Ones, And You Can Buy Or Sell Them At The Wrong Time. And The Truth Is You Never Need To Sell Them.

Does The Business Have Favourable Long Term Prospects?

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

The (stock) Market Is There Only As A Reference Point To See If Anybody Is Offering To Do Anything Foolish. When We Invest In Stocks, We Invest In Businesses.

I Would Say That Life At 84, I Am Having As Much Fun As I've Ever Had In My Life. I Mean I Get To Do What I Love Every Day With The People I Love-and It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

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

Have Confidence

Your Money Can Be Inflated Away But Your Knowledge And Talent Cannot.

An Ipo Is Like A Negotiated Transaction - The Seller Chooses When To Come Public - And It's Unlikely To Be A Time That's Favourable To You.

Basically, The Single-most Important Decision In Evaluating A Business Is Pricing Power.

Important Decisions

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.

That's The Reality Of What They're Going To Sell Them To The Treasury For.

You Should Invest In A Business That Even A Fool Can Run, Because Someday A Fool Will.

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

We All Make Mistakes. If You Can't Make Mistakes, You Can't Make Decisions. I've Made A Lot Bigger Mistakes Myself.

We're Perfectly Willing To Trade Away A Big Payoff For A Certain Payoff.

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

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.

I Don't Need 15 Houses. Owning Real Estate Doesn't Mean Much To Me. I Don't Like To Think About Things Like That. I Don't Need 12 Boats, Or Even The World's Largest Boat With A Crew Of 80. I'd Have To Take Care Of Them, To Worry About Them. I Get A Lot More Fun Out Of Life Without All The Bells And Whistles.

I Don't Think It Would Be Crazy To Have A Model Or An Entity Model On The Reconstruction Finance Corp.

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.

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

I Understand Goldman Sachs Businesses. We Do Lot Of Business With Him, And Ge Has Been - I Think It's The Longest Running Stock In The Dow Jones Industrial Average. It Will Be 100 Years Now It Will Be Around. I Hope I'm Around Then, Too. And It Was An Attractive Investment. And We Have Had A Lot Of Money Around, Over The Last Two Years, And We're Seeing Things That Are Attractive Now.

Possessing A Powerful Worldwide Brand Is Essential For Sustained Success.

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

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

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

Successful Investing

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

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

Investing Money

People Should Always Know Better.

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

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

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

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

The Ability To Say No Is A Tremendous Advantage For An Investor.

You Get In A Lot Of Trouble When You Start Putting Fictitious Numbers.

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.

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.

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.

We Only Want To Link Up With People Whom We Like, Admire, And Trust. ... We Do Not Wish To Join With Managers Who Lack Admirable Qualities, No Matter How Attractive The Prospects Of Their Business. We've Never Succeeded In Making A Good Deal With A Bad Person.

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

In Some Corner Of The World They Are Probably Still Holding Regular Meetings Of The Flat Earth Society. We Derive No Comfort Because Important People, Vocal People, Or Great Numbers Of People Agree With Us. Nor Do We Derive Comfort If They Don't.

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

Mass Destruction

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

Investing Money

It Takes 20 Years To Build A Reputation And Five Minutes To Ruin It. If You Think About That, You'll Do Things Differently.

I Prefer Liquor Store Robbers With Hungry Kids To Companies That Locate Offshore To Avoid U.s. Taxes.

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

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

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

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

More Investment Sins Are Probably Committed By Otherwise Quite Intelligent People Because Of "tax Considerations" Than From Any Other Cause. One Of My Friends-a Noted West Coast Philosopher-maintains That A Majority Of Life's Errors Are Caused By Forgetting What One Is Really Trying To Do. This Is Certainly The Case When An Emotionally Supercharged Element Like Taxes Enters The Picture (i Have Another Friend-a Noted East Coast Philosopher Who Says It Isn't The Lack Of Representation He Minds-it's The Taxation).

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

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.

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

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

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

It Makes A Difference Who The Treasury Secretary Is.

Making A Difference

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

If We Have A Strength, It Is In Recognizing When We Are Operating Well Within Our Circle Of Competence And When We Are Approaching The Perimeter.

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

In Fact, In My Adult Lifetime, I Don't Think I've Ever Seen People As Fearful Economically As They Are Right Now.

The Wise Man Once Said Invest Young

We've Used Derivatives For Many, Many Years. I Don't Think Derivatives Are Evil, Per Se, I Think They Are Dangerous.

The Greatest Investment A Young Person Can Make Is In Their Own Education, In Their Own Mind. Because Money Comes And Goes. Relationships Come And Go. But What You Learn Once Stays With You Forever.

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.

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

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