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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.

-Warren Buffett

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When Somebody Makes It

Warren Buffett

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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.

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

I Am A Better Investor Because I Am A Businessman, And A Better Businessman Because I Am No Investor.

When Berkshire Buys Common Stock, We Approach The Transaction As If We Were Buying Into A Private Business.

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

Look For Companies With High Profit Margins.

Intrinsic Value Can Be Defined Simply: It Is The Discounted Value Of The Cash That Can Be Taken Out Of A Business During Its Remaining Life.

Intrinsic Value

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

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

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

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

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

We Make Investment Decisions Based On Our Evaluation Of The Most Profitable Combination Of Probabilities.

I Look At Everything. That's My Job. I Really Do, Every Day. I Think About Everything.

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

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.

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

I Do Know That When I Am 60, I Should Be Attempting To Achieve Different Personal Goals Than Those Which Had Priority At Age 20.

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

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.

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.

There Is No Perfect Mathematical Formula For Pricing A Business.

[gold] Gets Dug Out Of The Ground In Africa, Or Someplace. Then We Melt It Down, Dig Another Hole, Bury It Again And Pay People To Stand Around Guarding It. It Has No Utility. Anyone Watching From Mars Would Be Scratching Their Head.

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

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

Never Depend On A Single Source Of Income.

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.

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

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

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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.

I've Read About All The Sales Today. If You're An Auto Dealer, You're Feeling It. If You're A Furniture Retailer Like We Are, You're Feeling It. If You're A Jewelry Retailer, You're Feeling It. I Know Some Of These Businesses Because We're In Them. Yeah, It's Being Felt, But It Will Be Felt Big Time More If We Don't Do Something About It, What's Going On.

Accounting Is The Language Of Business.

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

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.

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

Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

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.

I Know The Country Works Extremely Well. You Know, But When It Isn't Clogged Up.

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.

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

Do What You Would Do For Free, Having Passion For What You Do Is The Most Important Thing.

Passion For What You Do

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

Businesses Always Have Opportunities To Improve Service, Product Lines, Manufacturing Techniques, And The Like, And Obviously These Opportunities Should Be Seized. But A Business That Constantly Encounters Major Change Also Encounters Many Chances For Major Error

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.

It's Far Better To Buy A Wonderful Company At A Fair Price Than A Fair Company At A Wonderful Price.

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

It Takes 150 Years To Build An Investment Bank And Only Five Minutes To Convince You To Sell Me Preferred Stock In It At A 10% Interest Rate.

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.

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

You've Got The Right - You've Got A Wonderful Person With Sheila Bair, Most Of The Viewers Have Never Heard Of Sheila Bair. [she] Has Taken Eight Percent Of The Deposits In The United States And Seamlessly Moved Those Over To Sound Institutions Which In Turn Have Gotten More Capital, Ended Up, It's Been A Magnificent Job.she'll Never Get A Golden Parachute Or Any Severance Pay Or Anything. She's Done A Great Job. We've Got Some Great Public Servants. We Have I Think The Right People In There To Get The Job Done, And Then They Need More Tools.

Chains Of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken.

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

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

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I’ve Worked In An Economy That Rewards Someone Who Saves The Lives Of Others On A Battlefield With A Medal, Rewards A Great Teacher With Thank-you Notes From Parents, But Rewards Those Who Can Detect The Mispricing Of Securities With Sums Reaching Into The Billions.

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

Our Marketable Equities Tell Us By Their Operating Results - Not By Their Daily, Or Even Yearly, Price Quotations - Whether Our Investments Are Successful. The Market May Ignore Business Success For A While, But Eventually Will Confirm It.

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We Set No Volume Goals In Our Insurance Business Generally-and Certainly Not In Reinsurance-as Virtually Any Volume Can Be Achieved If Profitability Standards Are Ignored.

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Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?

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.

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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.

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

Mass Destruction

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

Good Profits Simply Are Not Inconsistent With Good Behavior.

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

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Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You're Doing.

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

Important Decisions

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

The Market System Rewards Me Outlandishly For What I Do, But That Doesn't Mean I'm Any More Deserving Of A Good Life Than A Teacher Or A Doctor Or Someone Who Fights In Afghanistan.

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.

As One Of My Older Friends Says, "nostalgia Just Isn't What It Used To Be." Let's Take A Stab At It, Anyway.

Never Be Afraid To Ask For Too Much When Selling Or Offer Too Little When Buying.

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.

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.

Successful Investing Takes Time, Discipline And Patience. No Matter How Great The Talent Or Effort, Some Things Just Take Time: You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.

Investing Money

I've Already Written A Section In The Annual Report For Next Year Explaining Why I Think In One Case That The Figures On Our Balance Sheet As Calculated Are Wrong. But It's The Standard Way Of Doing It. It's Holy Writ. The Sec Wants Us To Do It That Way, And We'll Do It That Way, And I'll Explain Why I Think It's Wrong And Shareholders Can Read It And See Whether They Agree With My Logic Or Don't.

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.

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.

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.

The Real Fortunes In This Country Have Been Made By People Who Have Been Right About The Business They Invested In, And Not Right About The Timing Of The Stock Market.

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.

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

The Noah Rule: Predicting Rain Doesn't Count; Building Arks Does.

The Rest Of The World Really Likes Our Stuff Pretty Well. It's Just We Buy So Damn Much Of What They Produce.

Investing Is The Greatest Business In The World Because You Never Have To Swing. You Stand At The Plate; The Pitcher Throws You General Motors At 47! U.s. Steel At 39! And Nobody Calls A Strike On You. There's No Penalty Except Opportunity. All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then, When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

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

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

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

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

Market Prices For Stocks Fluctuate At Great Amplitudes Around Intrinsic Value But, Over The Long Term, Intrinsic Value Is Virtually Always Reflected At Some Point In Market Price.

Intrinsic Value

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

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

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

The Secret Is To Find What You Love To Do.i Mean, I Tell The Students Look For The Job That You Would Take If You Didn't Need A Job. I Mean, It's That Simple. And I Was Lucky Enough To Find It Very Early In Life. And Then The Second Thing Is To Have People Around You That Make Feel Good Every Day, And Make You A Better Person Than You Otherwise Would Be.

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

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

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.

Occasionally, A Man Must Rise Above Principles.

The Most Important Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself. Very Few People Get Anything Like Their Potential Horsepower Translated Into The Actual Horsepower Of Their Output In Life. Potential Exceeds Realization For Many People...the Best Asset Is Your Own Self. You Can Become To An Enormous Degree The Person You Want To Be.

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.

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 Own A Wonderful Business...the Best Thing To Do Is Keep It. All You're Going To Do Is Trade Your Wonderful Business For A Whole Bunch Of Cash, Which Isn't As Good As The Business, And You Got The Problem Of Investing In Other Businesses, And You Probably Paid A Tax In Between. So My Advice To Anybody Who Owns A Wonderful Business Is Keep It.

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.

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

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

Look At Market Fluctuations As Your Friend Rather Than Your Enemy; Profit From Folly Rather Than Participate In It.

Investment Success

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

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

We're Paying Maybe 25 Percent Of The Income Tax, But The Payroll Tax Is Over A Third Of The Receipts Of The Federal Government. And They Don't Take That From Me On Capital Gains. They Don't Take That From Me On Dividends.

As Far As You Are Concerned, The Stock Market Does Not Exist. Ignore It.

The Best Investment You Can Make, Is An Investment In Yourself... The More You Learn, The More You'll Earn.

Best Investment

Diversification Is Protection Against Ignorance. It Makes Little Sense If You Know What You Are Doing.

My Net Worth Is The Market Value Of Holdings Less The Tax Payable Upon Sale. The Liability Is Just As Real As The Asset Unless The Value Of The Asset Declines (ouch), The Asset Is Given Away (no Comment), Or I Die With It. The Latter Course Of Action Would Appear To At Least Border On A Pyrrhic Victory.

When It's Raining Gold, Reach For A Bucket, Not A Thimble.

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

Observing That The Market Was Frequently Efficient, Emt Adherents Went On To Conclude Incorrectly That It Was Always Efficient. The Difference Between These Propositions Is Night And Day.

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

Time Is The Friend Of The Wonderful Business. It's The Enemy Of The Lousy Business. If You're In A Lousy Business For A Long Time, You're Going To Get A Lousy Result, Even If You Buy It Cheap. If You're In A Wonderful Business For A Long Time, Even If You Pay A Little Too Much Going In, You're Going To Get A Wonderful Result If You Stay In A Long Time.

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

Over The Years, A Number Of Very Smart People Have Learned The Hard Way That A Long String Of Impressive Numbers Multiplied By A Single Zero Always Equals Zero.

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

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure Understated.

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

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

At This Point, When Treasury Bills, Seven Day Treasury Bills At 1/20th Of One Percent, It's Not Because People Want To Earn 1/20th Of One Percent, It's Because They Trust The Fact The Treasury Will Give It Back To Them Next Week.

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

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.

The Most Important Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself... Nobody Can Tax It Or Take It Away From You.

People Should Always Know Better.

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

Having First Rate People On The Team Is More Important Than Designing Hierarchies And Clarifying Who Reports To Whom.

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?

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

There Are Three Kinds Of People: 1. Innovators. 2. Imitators. 3. Idiots.

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

Sound Investing Can Make You Very Wealthy If You're Not In Too Big A Hurry

The Obligation Of A Society As Prosperous As Ours Is To Figure Out How Nobody Gets Left Too Far Behind.

Larger Sums May Be An Advantage At Some Cases And A Disadvantage At Others.

Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

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

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

What The Human Being Is Best At Doing Is Interpreting All New Information So That Their Prior Conclusions Remain Intact.

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

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

I Have No Use Whatsoever For Projections Or Forecasts. They Create An Illusion Of Apparent Precision. The More Meticulous They Are, The More Concerned You Should Be. We Never Look At Projections, But We Care Very Much About, And Look Very Deeply At, Track Records. If A Company Has A Lousy Track Record, But A Very Bright Future, We Will Miss The Opportunity.

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.

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