People From Omaha

"Our performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market ... in a year when the general market had a substantial advance, I would be well satisfied to match the advance of the averages."

"Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value."

"My old boss, Ben Graham, told me very early on you get more trouble with a good idea than a bad idea, because the good idea works. I mean, it's a good idea to buy a home, for example. And then people go crazy sometimes. The good idea works, and it works, and it works. Stocks work out better than bonds most of the time. And, after a while, people forget that there were some other limiting conditions. With Edgar Lawrence Smith's book, it was that when bonds yield the same as stocks — which was the case then — the stocks are going to outperform because they have this retained earnings. So stocks started going up in the Twenties and all of a sudden they were selling at 5 or 6 times the prices as when they bought the book. And the original correct perception on his part had experienced changing conditions, but people ... got their confirmation through stock prices. That's what happens in bull markets. People start out thinking stocks are cheap, and then they start thinking stocks have gone up. And, a stock can be a good buy or a bad buy. A bond can be a good buy or a bad buy. It depends on price."

"I have been on twenty public company corporate boards, not counting any Berkshire subsidiaries. ... The independent directors, in many cases, are the least independent. ... If the income you receive as a corporate director ... is an important part of your income ... how in the world is that independent?"

"Criticize by category — praise by name."

"Anyone who has become rich twice is dumb. Why would you risk what you need and have for what you don’t need? If you are already rich, there is no upside to taking on a lot more risk, but there is disgrace on the downside."

"The approach and strategies are very similar in that you gather all the information you can and then keep adding to that base of information as things develop. You do whatever the probabilities indicated based on the knowledge that you have at that time, but you are always willing to modify your behaviour or your approach as you get new information. In bridge, you behave in a way that gets the best from your partner. And in business, you behave in the way that gets the best from your managers and your employees."

"I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election."

"Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. 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. My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery. (For starters, the odds against my 1930 birth taking place in the U.S. were at least 30 to 1. My being male and white also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans then faced.) My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. 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. In short, fate's distribution of long straws is wildly capricious. The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt, but rather gratitude. Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs. My pledge starts us down that course."

"More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death. Measured by dollars, this commitment is large. In a comparative sense, though, many individuals give more to others every day. Millions of people who regularly contribute to churches, schools, and other organizations thereby relinquish the use of funds that would otherwise benefit their own families. The dollars these people drop into a collection plate or give to United Way mean forgone movies, dinners out, or other personal pleasures. In contrast, my family and I will give up nothing we need or want by fulfilling this 99% pledge. Moreover, this pledge does not leave me contributing the most precious asset, which is time. Many people, including — I'm proud to say — my three children, give extensively of their own time and talents to help others. Gifts of this kind often prove far more valuable than money."

"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."

"If a dog is biting a black man, the black man should kill the dog, whether the dog is a police dog or a hound dog or any kind of dog. If a dog is fixed on a black man when that black man is doing nothing but trying to take advantage of what the government says is supposed to be his, then that black man should kill that dog or any two-legged dog who sets the dog on him."

"In the last year of his life, Malcolm X added a breadth to his essential vision that would have brought him, had he lived, into inevitable confrontation with the question of difference as a creative and necessary force for change. For as Malcolm X progressed from a position of resistance to, and analysis of, the racial status quo, to more active considerations of organizing for change, he began to reassess some of his earlier positions...Before he was killed, Malcolm had altered and broadened his opinions concerning the role of women in society and the revolution. He was beginning to speak with increasing respect of the connection between himself and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose policies of nonviolence appeared to be so opposite to his own. And he began to examine the societal conditions under which alliances and coalitions must indeed occur. He had also begun to discuss those scars of oppression which lead us to war against ourselves in each other rather than against our enemies. There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are Black women who seek our own definitions, recognizing diversity among ourselves with respect. We have been around within our communities for a very long time, and we have played pivotal parts in the survival of those communities: from Hat Shep Sut through Harriet Tubman to Daisy Bates and Fannie Lou Hamer to Lorraine Hansberry to your Aunt Maydine to some of you who sit before me now."

"There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living. I’m not going to pretend that the moment I first saw or heard Malcolm X he became my shining prince, because it wouldn’t be true...I’d read Malcolm’s autobiography, and I liked his style, and I thought he looked a lot like my father’s people, but I was one of the ones who didn’t really hear Malcolm’s voice until it was amplified by death...I had been guilty of what many of us are still guilty of – letting the media, and I don’t mean only the white media – define the bearers of those messages most important to our lives. When I read Malcolm X with careful attention, I found a man much closer to the complexities of real change than anything I had read before. Much of what I say here tonight was born from his words."

"And he (Baldwin) recalls the time when he was sitting with Malcolm X and his new baby. "I said: 'Malcolm are you trying to tell me if that child were white you would dash it to the floor because it's a devil's child?' Well, it was a difficult question and he couldn't answer it. Then he went to Mecca and when he returned I knew I didn't need to ask him that question anymore. It was then that American society began regarding him as dangerous". (1985)"

"Malcolm X asked a very important question years ago, which I did not quite hear at that moment. We were doing a radio program with young students in 1961 when there were the two poles in America, Black Muslims on one hand, and the very beginning of the student sit-ins on the other. And I was there as moderator, because it was Malcolm and the students who were talking. And Malcolm was very good with a kid when he said: "If you are a citizen, why do you fight for your civil rights? If you are a citizen, you have civil rights. If you don't have them, you are not a citizen." Very harshly put, but absolutely correct. Therefore, the Civil Rights Movement is a misnomer in a sense. It clarifies matters at least for me to think of it as the last slave rebellion, for that is what it was. The last slave uprising, and the very last time that the American black people, who are no longer alone as they were even twenty years ago, will petition the American government. (1980)"

"it is very important to remember that America was settled by Europe. You know, it takes about five minutes for a European to become an American, and, as Malcolm said, the first word he learned was "Nigger." That puts it a little brutally, but it is very accurate. (1973)"

"When Malcolm talks or one of the Muslims talks, they articulate for all the Negro people who hear them; who listen to them. They articulate their suffering, the suffering which has been in this country so long denied. That's Malcolm's great authority over any of his audiences. He corroborates their reality; he tells them that they really exist. (1963)"

"he would become one of the most influential advocates of equal rights as well as one of the harshest critics of white supremacy in the United States before his assassination in 1965. In particular his advocacy of self defence for Black people shocked the establishment: "Every time you pick up your newspaper, you see that I'm advocating violence. I have never advocated any violence. I've only said that Black people who are the victims of organised violence perpetrated upon us, we should defend ourselves… So, we only mean vigorous action in self-defence and that vigorous action we feel we're justified in initiating by any means necessary. The press call us racist and people who are 'violent in reverse.'… They make you think that if you try to stop the Klan from lynching you, you're practising 'violence in reverse.'" Originally a member of the Nation of Islam, El-Shabazz later left the group and founded the secular Organization of Afro-American Unity. He increasingly came to reject capitalism as inherently linked to racism, declaring in 1964: "You can't have capitalism without racism." Just three days before his murder he delivered a speech stating: "We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterised this era… it is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.""

"Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.-both leaders with large constituencies-had been murdered just as each was unscrolling a map on which race and class intersected in a shared landscape."

"Don’t go through life without reading the autobiographies of Emma Goldman, Prince Kropotkin, Malcolm X"