Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
2.
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
3.
Our favorite holding period is forever.
4.
Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful.
5.
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
6.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
7.
Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
8.
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
9.
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
10.
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
11.
I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.
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12.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
13.
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
14.
Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
15.
The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.
16.
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
17.
Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
18.
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
19.
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
20.
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
21.
There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?
22.
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
23.
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
24.
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
25.
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
26.
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
27.
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
28.
We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.
29.
I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
30.
Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
31.
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
32.
Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
33.
It’s never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.
34.
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
35.
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
36.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
37.
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
38.
We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.
39.
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
40.
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
41.
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
42.
Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’.
43.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
44.
I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.
45.
There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.
46.
I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of – of American capitalism.
47.
You have no ability, if you’re a financial institution and you’re threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.
48.
I am a huge bull on this country. We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.
49.
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
50.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
51.
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
52.
We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’
53.
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
54.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
55.
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
56.
Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.
57.
Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.
58.
I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.
59.
You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
60.
I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
61.
We’ve used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.
62.
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
63.
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
64.
If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.
65.
I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
66.
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
67.
In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
68.
Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
69.
I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.
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Roman Marshanski is the founder of Humoropedia.com and former Hollywood actor. You can Google his name to see the list of his movies (or you can click on his name above this box to visit his personal website). He wrote thousands of pages of fiction. Some of that fictional writing is screenplays and a lot of it is comedic writing. So he completed two feature film screenplays and many shorter literary works, some of which are comedy. He did most of that writing during his film career as a Hollywood actor. He was the lead actor in Rebecca Cremona's Magdalena. Rebecca Cremona was Steven Spielberg's protege on Munich. So he has a deep understanding of the creative process and can be considered an authority on all things related to humor. Indeed, his screenplays contain a lot of humor. That's where his love for jokes started. Eventually, this love of jokes led Roman to the creation of Humoropedia.com, the wonderful home of funny jokes and witty puns. He thinks humor is something very good. If you also think so, please follow him on X now because he has a sense of humor.
