Warren Buffett
It makes no difference to a widow with her savings in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation or pays no income tax during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leaves her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 100 percent income tax but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent.Collection: Zero
Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.Collection: Investing
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.Collection: Believe
We will only do with your money what we would do with our own.Collection: Investing
A lot of people disagree with me on this, I believe in mark to market.Collection: Believe
The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.Collection: Believe
Our marketable equities tell us by their operating results - not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations - whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it.Collection: Successful
The idea that you try to time purchases based on what you think business is going to do in the next year or two, I think that's the greatest mistake that investors make because it's always uncertain. People say it's a time of uncertainty. It was uncertain on September 10th, 2001, people just didn't know it. It's uncertain every single day. So take uncertainty as part of being involved in investment at all. But uncertainty can be your friend. I mean, when people are scared, they pay less for things. We try to price. We don't try to time at all.Collection: Mistake
I wouldn't want to manufacture cigarettes. But if I owned - we do own Costco. Do they sell them? Yes. So I don't have a problem owning stock in that. But I just wouldn't want to - I wouldn't want to do it myself. I basically think, if anything is sufficiently antisocial, society should do something about it. But that's a separate question. But - and I don't think there's any company that I have seen that's 100 percent pure.Collection: Thinking
We have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.Collection: Events
I don't want to be on the other side of the table from the customer. I was never selling anything that I didn't believe in myself or use myself.Collection: Believe
If you gave me $100 billion and said take away the soft drink leadership of Coca-Cola in the world, I'd give it back to you and say it can't be done.Collection: Giving
So smile when you read a headline that says "Investors lose as market falls." Edit it in your mind to "Disinvestors lose as market falls-but investors gain." Though writers often forget this truism, there is a buyer for every seller and what hurts one necessarily helps the other. (As they say in golf matches: "Every putt makes someone happy.")Collection: Hurt
Success is having people love you that you want to have love you.Collection: Love You
One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out and get it over. Your problem won’t improve with age.Collection: Over You
I've seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage -- leverage being borrowed money. You really don't need leverage in this world much. If you're smart, you're going to make a lot of money without borrowing.Collection: Smart
The greatest Enemies of the Equity investor are Expenses and Emotions.Collection: Enemy
Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy or elections.Collection: Trying
Our policy is to concentrate holdings. We try to avoid buying a little of this or that when we are only lukewarm about the business or its price. When we are convinced as to attractiveness, we believe in buying worthwhile amounts.Collection: Believe
In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses-How to Value a Business, and How to Think about Market Prices. Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business who's earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now.Collection: Thinking
There is no perfect mathematical formula for pricing a business.Collection: Perfect
Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay.Collection: Lines
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.Collection: Real
I don't want to hold out false hopes that the - by some magic moment, that things will turn around in a couple months because they wouldn't, Charlie. I mean, and it's a big mistake to try and mislead people.Collection: Couple
As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return.Collection: Long
I have no views as to where it will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won't do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money and there will be a lot - and it's a lot - it's a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that.Collection: Thinking
My father was the best person i've ever known.Collection: Inspirational
If you've got a good enough business, if you have a monopoly newspaper, if you have a network television station - I'm talking of the past - you know, your idiot nephew could run it. And if you've got a really good business, it doesn't make any difference.Collection: Running
I think what people understand there probably - well, they were hoping the private sector would do it [rescuing AIG ].Collection: Thinking
If I eat 2,700 calories a day, a quarter of that is Coca-Cola.Collection: Coca Cola
If I were the treasury secretary or head of the Fed, you know, I would try to scare the hell the out of the private sector and say, you better save this because you're going down with the ship.Collection: Trying
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.Collection: Teacher
What's going to happen - things we're doing are going to have some inflationary consequences.Collection: Happens
Is management candid with the shareholders?Collection: Investing
It's very important that the determination of the US Congress to do what is is needed be made evident this week and by the actions of most of the members. I mean, you're not going to get total assent.Collection: Determination
If you own the only newspaper in town, up until the last five years or so, you have pricing power and you didn't have to go to the office.Collection: Years
I'll take the deal, whatever you want to do.Collection: Want
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.Collection: Business
Does management resist the institutional imperative?Collection: Doe
We need to throw the resources at this that are necessary. But like I say, we are not spending money. I mean, if we buy these assets intelligently, the United States Treasury will make money. I mean, it's borrowing money. It's just a few percent a year.Collection: Mean
I mean [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt didn't - you know, when he came in, he didn't print any money.Collection: Mean
I have three boxes on my desk: In, Out, and Too Hard.Collection: Three
I would say the biggest single cause was we had an incredible residential real estate bubble.Collection: Real
The financial calculus that Charlie and I employ would never permit our trading a good night's sleep for a shot at a few extra percentage points of return. I've never believed in risking what my friends and family have and need in order to pursue what they don't have and don't need.Collection: Good Night
How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge.Collection: Games
Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero.Collection: Zero
We have to live with the rest of the world. And it's a mistake, in my view. Trade has generally developed in this country. We actually export 12 or 13 percent of our GDP. It was only 5 percent in 1970. But it benefits us. It benefits the rest of the world. It doesn't benefit the steelworker maybe in Ohio. And that's the problem that has to be addressed, because when you have something that's good for society, but terribly harmful for given individuals, we have got to make sure those individuals are taken care of.Collection: Country