Warren Buffett Quotes

Nevertheless, we will stick with the approach that got us here and try not to relax our standards. Ted Williams, in The Story of My Life, explains why: “My argument is, to be a good hitter, you’ve got to get a good ball to hit. It’s the first rule in the book. If I have to bite at stuff that is out of my happy zone, I’m not a .344 hitter. I might only be a .250 hitter.” Charlie and I agree and will try to wait for opportunities that are well within our own “happy zone.

At Berkshire, full reporting means giving you the information that we would wish you to give to us if our positions were reversed.

Can you imagine any public company embracing a business model that would lead to the decline in revenue that we experienced from 1986 through 1999?

Of Wall Street maxims the most foolish may be “You can't go broke taking a profit.

deal. Mrs. B belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records on many counts. Signing a non-compete at 99 merely adds one more.

if we aren't happy owning a piece of that business with the Exchange closed, we're not happy owning it with the Exchange open.

Trumpeting EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is a particularly pernicious practice. Doing so implies that depreciation is not truly an expense, given that it is a “non-cash” charge.

Imagine, if you will, that at the beginning of this year a company paid all of its employees for the next ten years of their service (in the way they would lay out cash for a fixed asset to be useful for ten years). In the following nine years, compensation would be a “non-cash” expense — a reduction of a prepaid compensation asset established this year. Would anyone care to argue that the recording of the expense in years two through ten would be simply a bookkeeping formality?

Our advantage, rather, was attitude: we had learned from Ben Graham that the key to successful investing was the purchase of shares in good businesses when market prices were at a large discount from underlying business values.

Despite the overriding importance of inflation in the investment equation, we will not punish you further with another full recital of our views; inflation itself will be punishment enough. (Copies of previous discussions are available for masochists.) But, because of the unrelenting destruction of currency values, our corporate efforts will continue to do a much better job of filling your wallet than of filling your stomach.

What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end

Of course, a business with terrific economics can be a bad investment if the purchase price is excessive.

Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.

Don't work for money, make money work for you.

Some time ago Ken Galbraith, in his witty and insightful The Great Crash, coined a new economic term: “the bezzle,” defined as the current amount of undiscovered embezzlement. This financial creature has a magical quality: The embezzlers are richer by the amount of the bezzle, while the embezzlees do not yet feel poorer.

Productive assets such as farms, real estate and, yes, business ownership produce wealth — lots of it. Most owners of such properties will be rewarded. All that’s required is the passage of time, an inner calm, ample diversification and a minimization of transactions and fees.