Interest rates are to asset prices what gravity is to the apple. When there are low interest rates, there is a very low gravitational pull on asset prices.
When you get to my age, you’ll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That’s the ultimate test of how you’ve lived your life.
I don’t have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don’t have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.
Mr. Market is kind of a drunken psycho. Some days he gets very enthused, some days he gets very depressed. And when he gets really enthused, you sell to him, and when he gets depressed, you buy from him. There’s no moral taint attached to that.
In the end we must have people to match our principles, not the reverse.
Managers that always promise to ‘make the numbers’ will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.
If you have a great manager, you want to pay him very well.
Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies.
In our view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction carrying dangers that, while latent, are potentially lethal.
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.’
Unless your answers are clearly better, copy the answers of your betters.
A Company should be viewed as an unfolding movie, not as a still photograph.
It’s better to build than to buy if you can find the right people.
Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we’re trying to do. It’s imperfect, but that’s what it’s all about.
The plan itself is opportunism. There is no plan before that.
It irritates the hell out of me but you can’t buy love.
Success is having people love you that you want to have love you.
I believe the chance of any event causing Berkshire to experience financial problems is essentially zero. We will always be prepared for the thousand-year flood; in fact, if it occurs, we will be selling life jackets to the unprepared.