"I want our pie to grow all the people, but if some other guy's pie is growing a little faster, that's terrific."
Read quote
6 likes
Quote collection
Howard Warren Buffett quotes (page 1 of 2)
35 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The U.S. Treasury has got borrowing costs like nobody else has. They can borrow basically unlimited amounts. They can stay there for years and years. These assets will be worth more money over time."
Read quote
6 likes
"The commercial paper market, when that dries up, you know, that's just like sucking the blood out of the economic body of the United States."
Read quote
6 likes
"I mean people -- people don't get -- they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing -- pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots."
Read quote
6 likes
"If you really think that houses prices are going to go up next year and the year after, you feel if I don't buy it this year, I'm going to have to buy it next year. [...] And 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 what they call social tools, and, you know, you're going to feel like an idiot if you didn't do it, because the house cost more."
Read quote
6 likes
"Capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system."
Read quote
6 likes
"You want to be greedy when others are fearful."
Read quote
5 likes
"Resolution Trust Company was set up to liquidate a bunch of assets that the government had inherited because the savings and loans went broke. So the savings and loans went broke, the government stepped in, paid off depositors, and now they're left with this mass of assets to sell. We're not talking about selling here, we're talking about buying intelligently. They were selling what they got handed to them by a bunch of savings and loan operators that had in many cases had done some very dumb thing. But their job was to liquidate it. And they liquidated."
Read quote
5 likes
"We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have."
Read quote
5 likes
"Soil is a living ecosystem and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil."
Read quote
5 likes
"Confidence is key. You're not going to leave your money with me unless you're confident I'm going to give it back to you. And 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."
Read quote
3 likes
"Beware of geeks, you know, bearing formulas."
Read quote
3 likes
"The American worker is more productive than he's ever been. We've got more people to do it. We've got all the ingredients for a sensational future. It's just that right now the athlete's on the floor. This is a super athlete."
Read quote
3 likes
"We have a terrific economy, it's like a great athlete that's had a cardiac arrest."
Read quote
3 likes
"The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century."
Read quote
3 likes
"I mean the whole economy just comes to a grinding halt. Competence in markets and in institutions, it's a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don't even think about it. Indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it's gone for five minutes, it's the only thing you think about. And the oxygen has been sucked out of the credit markets."
Read quote
3 likes
"You may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing. I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing."
Read quote
3 likes
"I mean, the job is Pearl Harbor. And you better not spends weeks and weeks and weeks trying to assign blame or deciding on a complete plan for fighting the whole war, you know, and letting a committee decide where the battleships should go and all of that. You better spring into action with the best people you have."
Read quote
3 likes
"When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it."
Read quote
3 likes
"When people talk about cash being king, it's not king if it just sits there and never does anything. There are times when cash buys more than other times, and this is one of the other times when it buys a fair amount more, so we use it."
Read quote
3 likes