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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.
The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine.
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
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.
It's not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble.
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.
A home is one of the most important assets that most people will ever buy. Homes are also where memories are made and you want to work with someone you can trust.
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.
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.
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.
We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a 'romantic.'
A lot of great fortunes in the world have been made by owning a single wonderful business. If you understand the business, you don't need to own very many of them.
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.
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
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.
A diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor a person perfected without trials. Someone is enjoying shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
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.
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.
I make plenty of mistakes and I'll make plenty more mistakes, too. That's part of the game. You've just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.
We have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.
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.
Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.
Like most trends, at the beginning it's driven by fundamentals, at some point speculation takes over. What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.
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.
The only question is whether you’re going to do it today or tomorrow. If you keep saying you’re going to do it tomorrow, you’ll never do it. You have to get on it today.
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.
Anything can happen in stock markets and you ought to conduct your affairs so that if the most extraordinary events happen, that you're still around to play the next day.
I think the biggest thing we need is to unclog the credit markets, and we may need another stimulus - if we do, it's - it should go to the lower and middle-income people.
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.
The truth is that I've got all my net worth safely in Berkshire and I will never sell a share so there is no one more concerned about what happens after my death than I am.
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.
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.
It's nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don't want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it's a little like saving sex for your old age.
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.
When a management with reputation for brilliance gets hooked up with a business with a reputation for bad economics, it's the reputation of the business that remains intact.
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.
There's not many businesses where someone can come in and offer to cut the price in half and somebody doesn't think about shifting. But that's the nature of the ratings business.
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.
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
I have this complicated procedure I go through every morning, which is to look in the mirror and decide what I'm going to do. And I feel at that point, everybody's had their say.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.