People From Omaha

"I'm comfortable apart, it's all written on my chart And I take what's given me, most cooperatively I do what people say and lie in bed all day Absolutely horrified, I hope you're satisfied"

"This is the place you end up when you lose the chase, Where you're dragged against your will from a basement on a hill, And all anybody knows, is you're not like them, So they kick you in the head...and send you back to bed."

"The first true love that folded at the slightest touch, brought down like an old hotel, people digging through the rubble for things they can resell."

"What I used to be will pass away, and then you'll see That all I want now is happiness for you and me."

"Everything here is free Everything but you and me This painting never dries Stupidity tries"

"Bored in a role, but he can't stop Standing up to sit back down, and lose the one thing found. Spinning the world like a toy top 'till there's a ghost in every town."

"I waited for a bus To separate the both of us And take me off far away from you 'Cause my feelings never change a bit I always feel like shit I don't know why; I guess that I "just do""

"The first time I saw you I knew it would never last I'm not half what I wish I was I'm so angry I don't think it'll ever pass And I was bad news for you just because I never meant to hurt you"

"London Bridge is safe and sound No matter what you keep repeating Nothing's gonna drag me down To a death that's not worth cheating"

"There's no question that trade can be an act of war, and I think it's led to bad things like the attitudes it's brought out in the United States. We should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. We should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best. With eight countries possessing nuclear weapons, including a few I would call quite unstable, I don't think it's a great idea to design a world where a few countries say, "Haha, we've won" while other countries are envious. … The main thing is that trade should not be a weapon. The United States has become an incredibly important country starting from nothing 250 years ago — there's never been anything like it. And it's a big mistake when you have 7.5 billion people who don't like you very well and you have 300 million people crowing about how well they've done. I don't think it's right and I don't think it's wise. The more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be at our expense — the more prosperous we'll become and the safer we'll feel and your children will feel someday."

"Warren Buffet controls an electric utility that has operations in the Midwest, Utah and Oregon. Oregon passed a law saying whatever income taxes are embedded in the electric rates paid to this monopoly electric company, must be paid to the government, or the ratepayers get the money back. Warren Buffet's fighting that like mad, because he knows... that company can permanently capture those taxes (if they're very smart about how they handle their finances) and enhance their profits."

"We gave Warren Buffet (another one of his companies) $100 million gift last year. ...[T]he state of New York had to create a special district in Erie County... [T]he justification for this is that Buffalo has the highest unemployment of the cities in New York state, and this would create jobs. It was a call-center for insurance... [A] competitor closed down their call-center, so there were no new jobs created, and... they created it in one of the whitest, wealthiest suburbs where there is virtually no public transportation. Again, transferring money up the chain of command, benefiting the second wealthiest man in America."

"As taxpayers we gave one of Warren Buffet's companies, in 2006, an interest-free loan of $665 million dollars, and he only has to pay half of it back 28 years from now. ...Imagine ...you bought a house in 1980 at the price in 1980. Up until now [2009] you haven't made any payments on the house, and this year you have to pay half in the... dollars you agreed to back then, no adjustment for inflation. Do you think that alone might make you a wealthy man?"

"I have no large desire to sacrifice much of my personal habits, intellectual pleasures, and personal standards in order to become a billionaire like Warren Buffet, and I... do not see the point of becoming one if I were to adopt Spartan (even miserly) habits and live in my starter house. Something about the praise lavished upon him for living in austerity while being so rich escapes me; if austerity is the end, he should become a monk or a social worker... becoming rich is a purely selfish act, not a social one. ...[T]here is no need to extol ...greed as a moral (or intellectual) accomplishment."

"The world's second-richest person called on Washington policymakers to adopt fundamental reforms on such costs to address what he called a "national emergency." He said health care eats up 17 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, at a time when many other countries pay only nine or 10 percent of GDP but have more doctors, nurses and hospital beds per capita. "It's like a tapeworm eating at our economic body," Buffett said on CNBC television. "If it was a choice today between Plan A, which is what we've got, or Plan B, which is the Senate bill, I would vote for the Senate bill," he said. "But I would much rather see a Plan C that really attacks costs, and I think that's what the American public wants to see." Rising costs, Buffett said, are holding back an economy that faced an "economic Pearl Harbor" in late 2008 when capital markets seized up."

"What J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were to the Age of Robber Barons, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, as well as digital moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are to the contemporary age of the rule of the 1%. Then as now, the super-rich used governments to write laws and rules to allow them to accumulate unlimited wealth; then as now, creating monopolies by enclosing the commons and killing competition is the strategy for becoming the 1%."

""How can you reconcile destroying the livelihoods of six hundred families," a local county judge wrote to Mr. Buffett at the time (2001). "Surely greater profits can't be more important than the lives of these people," he wrote, pleading with Mr. Buffett to keep the plant open. Mr. Buffett never responded, and the factory was closed just a few months later."

"Warren Buffett, one of the richest guys in the world, openly admits that his effective tax rate is lower than his secretary's. It's time to tell the billionaire class that if they want to enjoy the benefits of America, they have to accept their responsibilities, and they have to start paying their fair share of taxes."

"I asked Buffett how many of his fellow billionaires shared his views. He laughed. “I’ll tell you, not very many,” he said. “They have this idea that it’s ‘their money’ and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don't factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do." … It may be surprising to some to hear the world’s foremost capitalist talk in this way, but Buffett’s views aren’t necessarily a sign of a soft heart. Rather, they reflect an understanding that how well we respond to globalization won’t be just a matter of identifying the right policies. It will also have to do with a change in spirit, a willingness to put our common interests and the interests of future generations ahead of short-term expediency."

"Buffett had invited me to Omaha to discuss tax policy. More specifically, he wanted to know why Washington continued to cut taxes for people in his income bracket when the country was broke. ... Buffett's low rates were a consequence of the fact that, like most wealthy Americans, almost all his income came from dividends and capital gains, investment income that since 2003 has been taxed at only 15 percent. The receptionist's salary, on the other hand, was taxed at almost twice that rate once FICA was included. From Buffett's perspective, the discrepancy was unconscionable."

"Buffett believes the most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. A successful investor doesn't focus on being with or against the crowd. The stock market will swing up and down. But in good times and bad, Buffett stays focused on his goals."

"Buffett does not believe that it is wise to bequeath great wealth and plans to give most of his money to his charitable foundation. ... Buffett is not cutting his children out of his fortune because they are wastrels or wantons or refuse to go into the family business — the traditional reasons rich parents withhold money. Says he: "My kids are going to carve out their own place in this world, and they know I'm for them whatever they want to do." But he believes that setting up his heirs with "a lifetime supply of food stamps just because they came out of the right womb" can be "harmful" for them and is "an antisocial act." To him the perfect amount to leave children is "enough money so that they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing." For a college graduate, Buffett reckons "a few hundred thousand dollars" sounds about right."

"Buffett, one of the richest men in the world and a vocal supporter of higher taxes on the rich, also is making use of a Roth. At the end of 2018, Buffett had $20.2 million in it."

"Boy, if he doesn't give capitalism a good name, who does?"

"Buy stock in a business that's so good that an idiot can run it, because sooner or later one will."

"Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1."

"Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken."

"Buffet's electric company in Iowa... There used to be 9 corporate-owned [electric] utilities owned in Iowa. They were rolled up into 2. The people in Johnson City... and 5 or 6 little neighboring communities got together and said, "We want lower electric rates. We've consolidated. Rates should go down." "No way," said the company. So they started organizing to buy out Warren Buffet's company and have municipal power. Everywhere in America that you have municipal power, it's cheaper than corporate [electric] power. Pretty soon they got advice and recommendations and help from the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities... Two prominent Iowa legislators... had a bill that would tax these municipal power agencies, and would hamstring them from any change in their business model... in the future, and that unless they promised to never again help people try to buy out Mr. Buffet's company, they had the votes to get this enacted. ...[A]s Carol Spaziani, the... retired city librarian... and one of the organizers of this drive said, "...I turn on the television and here are these images and these news stories about this beneficent billionaire, Warren Buffet, who is giving away all of this money. What nobody writes about is how he's gouging the people of Johnson City with excessive electricity rates, and that's how he's making his money."

"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)"

"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)"

"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."

"You... have to have the knowledge to... make a very general estimate about the value of the underlying businesses. But you do not cut it close. That is what Ben Graham meant by having a margin of safety."

"The Washington Post Company in 1973 was selling for $80 million in the market. ...[Y]ou could have sold the assets ...for not less than $400 million ...Now, if the stock had declined even further... to $40 million... its beta would have been greater. ...This is truly Alice in Wonderland. I have never been able to figure out why it's riskier to buy $400 million worth of properties for $40 million than for $80 million."