Businesspeople From The United States

"You want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others are greedy. It's that simple. ... They're pretty fearful. In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now."

"People will always try to stop you doing the right thing if it is unconventional."

"You know, if I'm playing bridge and a naked woman walks by, I don't ever see her — don't test me on that! ... You know, I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had the right three cell mates, so we could play bridge all the time. ... It takes some investment to play it ... I mean, you cannot sit down and learn how to play it like most games. ... There's a lotta lessons in it ... you have to look at all the facts. You have to draw inferences from what you've seen, what you've heard. You have to discard improper theories about what the hand had as more evidence comes in sometimes. You have to be open to a possible change of course if you get new information. You have to work with a partner, particularly on defense."

"The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent."

"I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner. But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing — and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that."

"The free market's the best mechanism ever devised to put resources to their most efficient and productive use. ... The government isn't particularly good at that. But the market isn't so good at making sure that the wealth that's produced is being distributed fairly or wisely. Some of that wealth has to be plowed back into education, so that the next generation has a fair chance, and to maintain our infrastructure, and provide some sort of safety net for those who lose out in a market economy. And it just makes sense that those of us who've benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share. ... When you get rid of the estate tax, you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games."

"You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat."

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

"It's class warfare. My class is winning, but they shouldn't be."

"A very low cost index fund where you don't put in all your money at one time ... If you accumulate a low cost index fund over 10 years ... with fairly regular sums, I think you will probably do better than 90% of the people around you that take up investing at a similar time."

"I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge. ... The approach and strategies [of bridge and stock investing] are very similar. In the stock market you do not base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. With bridge, you need to adhere to a disciplined bidding system. While there is no one best system, there is one that works best for you. Once you choose a system, you need to stick with it."

"We're more comfortable in that kind of business. It means we miss a lot of very big winners. But we wouldn't know how to pick them out anyway. It also means we have very few big losers - and that's quite helpful over time. We're perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff."

"The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble... We want to buy them when they're on the operating table."

"If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I'd be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I've ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It's a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that."

"Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 125. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing."

"We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely."

"Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid."

"Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway."

"If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety..."

"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It is like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die."

"It's a game of a million inferences. There are a lot of things to draw inferences from — cards played and not played. These inferences tell you something about the probabilities. It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time."

"I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big."

"Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results."

"Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

"I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. ... It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty."

"Love is the greatest advantage a parent can give."

"Draw a circle around the businesses you understand and then eliminate those that fail to qualify on the basis of value, good management and limited exposure to hard times. ... Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up. ... People have been successful investors because they've stuck with successful companies. Sooner or later the market mirrors the business."

"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 O.K."

"In my view, for most people, the best thing to do is to own the S&P 500 index fund. People will try and sell you other things because there’s more money in it for them if they do. And I’m not saying that that’s a conscious act on their part. Most good salespeople believe their own baloney."

"I call investing 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 lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it."

"I would like to first introduce our directors. I'm Warren Buffett, and I was born and raised here in Omaha. We have Greg Abel — he was born and raised in Canada, and we have Ajit Jain who was born and raised in India. So we have a very diverse group."

"In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending."

"Confidence comes back one at a time, but fear, is instantaneous."

"I eat like a normal 6-year-old, but if you look at the mortality statistics, I mean, 6-year-olds don't die very often."

"Warren Buffett's Top 10 Rules for Success – YouTube, uploaded by Evan Carmichael, 2015"

"I like to study failure, actually. My partner says, "I want to know where I'll die so I'll never go there." We want to see what has caused businesses to go bad. The biggest thing that kills them is complacency. ... The danger would always be that you rest on your laurels."

"Capitalism is all about somebody coming and trying to take the castle. Now what you need is .... you need a castle that has some durable competitive advantage — some castle that has a moat around it."

"I just read and read and read. ... I have always enjoyed reading."

"There's a whole bunch of things I don't know a thing about — I just stay away from those. So, I stay within what I call my circle of competence."

"Look for integrity, intelligence and energy."

"Take the job that you would take if you were independently wealthy."

"The problem with municipal finance generally is that, you know, Neville Chamberlain said “not in our time,” in terms of peace and, basically, many politicians think “not in my time” when they’re dealing with fiscal matters. The pension situation, first states, then cities, and so-on, you… it’s absolutely terrible, because really don’t wanna face – they want, they can give promises now which translate into votes, and they don’t really have to with the pensions they really don’t have to deliver on those until they’re long gone. And Puerto Rico, they’ve been kicking the can down the road for a long time, and they even raised new money, I think, not much more than a year ago, a very high price for hedge funds. The answer to financial problems is not more borrowing, more borrowing, but they’ll do it as long as they can and finally the day of reckoning comes and it would have been so much easier to tackle the problem earlier and no, you know, you got all different classes of bondholders and other claimants and they’re gonna fight like crazy. Charlie [Munger] always says, he says, “an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure,” and now you’re in the cure stage in Puerto Rico. "Buffett on Puerto Rico's debt crisis" CNBC (2 May 2016)"

"I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life. "10 Brilliant Quotes From Warren Buffett, America's Second-Richest Person " entrepreneur.com (13 November 2014)"

"What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don't know. "The genius of Warren Buffett in 23 quotes" MarketWatch (19 August 2015)"

"Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble. "25 Best Warren Buffett Quotes" The Motley Fool (28 September 2014)"

"You can't make a good deal with a bad person. "23 Quotes from Warren Buffett on Life and Generosity" forbes.com (02 December 2013)"

"We're going to move a lot of crude (oil) in this country, and we have to learn how to do it very safely. "Buffett: Moving Oil By Rail Safely Is A Major Industry Concern" Investing.com (24 April 2014)"

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. "The Three Essential Warren Buffett Quotes To Live By" forbes.com (20 April 2014)"

"There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham and Dodd will continue to prosper."

"[T]he secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Ben Graham and Dave Dodd wrote Security Analysis, yet I have seen no trend toward in... 35 years... There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."