Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Once you get into debt, it’s hell to get out. Don’t let credit card debt carry over. You can’t get ahead paying eighteen percent.
Who would want one's children growing up buying things like bitcoin? I hope to God my family doesn't buy it. It's noxious poison.
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.
Mankind invented a system to cope with the fact that we are so intrinsically lousy at manipulating numbers. It's called the graph.
I'm a great admirer of the Trump change of mind about China and making an ally out of China instead of screaming about their trade.
It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.
Being short and seeing a promoter take the stock up is very irritating. It's not worth it to have that much irritation in your life.
Why would you want to invest with a guy whose thought process says, "If a second layer of fees is good, then let's add a third layer.
If you always tell people why, they'll understand it better, they'll consider it more important, and they'll be more likely to comply.
Just as a man working with his tools should know its limitations, a man working with his cognitive apparatus must know its limitations.
I'm very pleased when the smartest people come [to the U.S.] and almost never pleased when the very bottom of the mental barrel comes in.
For many of our shareholders, our stock is all they own, and we're acutely aware of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep.
In my life there are not that many questions I can't properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compound interest table.
Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things.
What's the best way to get a good spouse? The best single way is to deserve a good spouse because a good spouse is by definition not nuts.
Using volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return.
A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.
I'm proud to be associated with the value system at Berkshire Hathaway; I think you'll make more money in the end with good ethics than bad.
The laws of thermodynamic s are such that if the water is getting warmer - and I believe it is - the energy of the weather is going to go up.
Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting.
If you don't keep learning, other people will pass you by. Temperament alone won't do it - you need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.
Missing out on some opportunity never bothers us. What's wrong with someone getting a little richer than you? It's crazy to worry about this.
So, economics should emulate physics' basic ethos, but its search for precision in physics-like formulas is almost always wrong in economics.
I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it.
The name of the game is continuing to learn. Even if you're very well trained and have some natural aptitude, you still need to keep learning.
You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.
Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best.
All intelligent investing is value investing - acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.
If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question (of whether you are past the boundary) is to answer it.
You've got to have models in your head and you've got to array you experience - both vicarious and direct - onto this latticework of mental models.
Wells Fargo had a glitch - the truth of the matter is they made a business judgement that was wrong. I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong.
I would argue that a majority of the horrors we face would not have happened if the accounting profession developed and enforced better accounting.
We don't train executives, we find them. If a mountain stands up like Everest, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that it's a high mountain.
There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn’t awash in cash — and I don’t want to go back.
I think time and time again, in reality, psychological notions and economic notions interplay, and the man who doesn't understand both is a damned fool.
We have to have a special insight, or we'll put it in the 'too tough' basket. All of you have to look for a special area of competency and focus on that.
It's a finite and very competitive world. All large aggregations of capital eventually find it hell on earth to grow and thus find a lower rate of return.
It's remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.
Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself.
The tradition of always looking for the answer in the most fundamental way available - that is a great tradition, and it saves a lot of time in this world.
Move only when you have an advantage. It's very basic. You have to understand the odds and have the discipline to bet only when the odds are in your favor.
Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.”
It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.
You're not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here.
You're looking for a mispriced gamble. That's what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That's value investing.
The investment game always involves considering both quality and price, and the trick is to get more quality than you pay for in price. It's just that simple.
Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself, causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance.
Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.
It never ceases to amaze me to see how much territory can be grasped if one merely masters and consistently uses all the obvious and easily learned principles.
If people tell you what you really don't want to hear what's unpleasant-there's an almost automatic reaction of antipathy. You have to train yourself out of it.