Quote collection
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"I'm not worried they're all about the investments we make. I mean, listen, this country - we've got $46,000 or $47,000 of GDP per capita. Now, we've done pretty darn well. We'll do better in the future."
"I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out."
"In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen."
"In one way, I'm sympathetic to the institutional reluctance to face the music. I'd give a lot to mark my weight to 'model' rather than to 'market.'"
"In my opinion, the entire field of investment management, involving hundreds of billions of dollars, would be more satisfactorily conducted if everyone had a good yardstick for measurement of ability and sensibly applied it."
"It's easy to identify many investment managers with great recent records. But past results, though important, do not suffice when prospective performance is being judged. How the record has been achieved is crucial."
"Market price, while used exclusively to value our investments in minority positions, is not a relevant factor when applied to our controlling interests."
"The managers at fault periodically report on the lesson they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons."
"We are trading away a little bit of our country all the time for this access consumption that we have over what we've produced. That is not good. I think it's terrible over time. But our country's productive grows enough so we actually can do that, and we'll still be better off. We just don't be as well off as if we hadn't done it."
"My net worth is the market value of holdings less the tax payable upon sale. The liability is just as real as the asset unless the value of the asset declines (ouch), the asset is given away (no comment), or I die with it. The latter course of action would appear to at least border on a Pyrrhic victory."
"Does management resist the institutional imperative?"
"I always invest in companies an idiot could run, because one day one will."
"SUPPOSE that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. This is a good one, he says enthusiastically. I'm in it, and I think you should be, too."
"I have three boxes on my desk: In, Out, and Too Hard."
"The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan."
"As one of my older friends says, "Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be." Let's take a stab at it, anyway."
"Exercise humility and restraint."
"In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century."
"Is management candid with the shareholders?"
"On his Giving Pledge philanthropy: The way I got the message out was to get a copy of FORBES, look down that 400 list and start making phone calls! Bill and Melinda [Gates] did the same thing. So keep publishing the list so I can milk it."