Quote collection
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"...I will give you two pieces of advice. Invest as much in yourself as you can; you are your own best asset by far. Then follow your passion; you want to be really excited to get out of bed every morning."
"We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven't learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind."
"Focus on return on equity, not earnings per share."
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection."
"You don't need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you aren't, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don't swing for the fences."
"The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do."
"I look at everything. That's my job. I really do, every day. I think about everything."
"Like I say, I don't think it'll be done perfectly. Maybe we'll end up with a little bit better [economy] system."
"Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre."
"A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere."
"Turnarounds seldom turn."
"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."
"A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth."
"Anyone who believes a growth rate in excess of 15% per annum over the long term is attainable should pursue a career in sales, but avoid one in mathematics."
"When I take a look at a company's annual report, if I don't understand it, they don't want me to understand it."
"Money to some extent sometimes let you be in more interesting environments. But it can't change how many people love you or how healthy you are."
"There is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job."
"We try to exert a Ted Williams kind of discipline. In his book The Science of Hitting, Ted explains that he carved the strike zone into 77 cells, each the size of a baseball. Swinging only at balls in his "best" cell, he knew, would allow him to bat .400; reaching for balls in his "worst" spot, the low outside corner of the strike zone, would reduce him to .230. In other words, waiting for the fat pitch would mean a trip to the Hall of Fame; swinging indiscriminately would mean a ticket to the minors."
"I don't read economic forecasts. I don't read the funny papers."
"When Berkshire Hathaway laid out three billion dollars for GE today, we didn't spend it, we invested it. When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it. Now, they're investing it in distress type assets but they're buying them at distress prices if they buy them at market. It's the kind of stuff I love to do. I just don't have 700 million. Maybe we could go in it together."