Businessman Quotes

“It is easier to rationalize than it is to be rational.”

“Success in investing doesn’t correlate with I.Q. Once you are above the level of 25; once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.”

“Inflation could be a very - is a likely consequence out of what's going on now.”

“If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires.”

“I don't think you can have a better secretary of the Treasury than Hank Paulson.”

“It is obvious that the performance of a stock last year or last month is no reason, per se, to either own it or to not own it now. It is obvious that an inability to "get even" in a security that has declined is of no importance. It is obvious that the inner warm glow that results from having held a winner last year is of no importance in making a decision as to whether it belongs in an optimum portfolio this year.”

“The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.”

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.”

“I make plenty of mistakes and I'll make plenty more mistakes, too. That's part of the game. You've just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.”

“If book knowledge made great investors, than the librarians would all be rich.”

“This country is going - be living better ten years from now than it is now. It will be living better in 20 years from now than ten years from now. The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century.”

“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.”

“We only want to link up with people whom we like, admire, and trust. ... We do not wish to join with managers who lack admirable qualities, no matter how attractive the prospects of their business. We've never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person.”

“It's just that I landed up in a terrific capitalist system. One that pays people who allocate capital extraordinarily well. Intrinsically, I'm not worth as much as somebody who invents something that could improves people's life, or health or whatever.”

“It isn't given to man to be able to run a financial institution where different interest-rate scenarios will prevail on all of that so as to produce kind of smooth, regular earnings from a very large base to start with.”

“I prefer liquor store robbers with hungry kids to companies that locate offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.”

“Yeah, we don't consider many stupid things. I mean, we get rid of 'em fast...Just getting rid of the nonsense -- just figuring out that if people call you and say, 'I've got this great, wonderful idea', you don't spend 10 minutes once you know in the first sentence that it isn't a great, wonderful idea...Don't be polite and go through the whole process.”

“If the world couldn't see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world's greatest investor but in reality have the world's worst record? Or be thought of as the world's worst investor when you were actually the best?”

“Never test the depth of river with both the feet.”

“It's never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.”

“We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.”

“For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.”

“Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime, it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart and not too smart at that, only a very few times. Indeed, we now settle for one good idea a year.”

“Trust is like the air we breathe--when it's present, nobody really notices; when it's absent, everybody notices.”

“As one of my older friends says, "Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be." Let's take a stab at it, anyway.”