Top 968 Quotes & Sayings by Warren Buffett - Page 16

If this is a war, my side has the nuclear bomb. We have K Street. We have Wall Street. Debbie doesn't have anybody. I want a government that is responsive to the people who got the short straw in life.

If you can't read the scoreboard. You don't know the score. If you don't know the score, you can't tell the winners from the losers.

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.

A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth.

We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future.

I have never been able to understand why the tax comes as such a body blow to many people since the rate on long-term capital gain is lower than on most likes of endeavor (tax policy indicated digging ditches is regarded as socially less desirable than shuffling stock certificates).

I am not worried about the country. I'm just worried about anything that gums up the potential of the country. And right now, it's pretty gummed up.

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.

My rather puritanical view is that any investment manager, whether operating as broker, investment counselor of a trust department, investment company, etc., should be willing to state unequivocally what he is going to attempt to accomplish and how he proposes to measure the extent to which he gets the job done.

At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books ... If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer.

Nevertheless, as circumstances presently appear, I feel substantially greater size is more likely to harm future results than to help them. This might not be true for my own personal results, but it is likely to be true for your results.

I certainly do believe anyone engaged in the management of money should have a standard of measurement, and that both he and the party whose money is managed should have a clear understanding why it is the appropriate standard, what time period should be utilized, etc.

We're paying maybe 25 percent of the income tax, but the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains. They don't take that from me on dividends.

We've actually been pretty good on exports. I mean we are exporting 12% of our GDP now roughly.

When we went crazy, and we did go crazy on residential real estate, it set things in motion that just - the dominoes started toppling.

If you want a government that's going to do the things we ask our government to do, you've got to get it from somebody.

They [Goverment] take from the woman who comes in and takes the wastebaskets out.

I'll take the deal, whatever you want to do.

If AIG had tried to unwind their derivatives books. I don't know. It would have hit every institution in the world.

I mean, in terms of alternatives, some people have suggested for example that why don't we - why isn't America doing what Berkshire Hathaway is doing? Why isn't that a better deal for America?

I've never been very fully employed either.

The patient that's on the floor with the cardiac arrest is not Wall Street. It's the American economy.

You can't help some increase from this point. I don't want any viewer to go away think a magic wand exists in Congress. So they're going to see some more bad news. But if we do this, we're doing the right thing.

The same things happen to quite an extent around the globe. I mean, the European banks were doing what the American banks were.

I would say that an RFC-like thing might make sense. I probably would do it myself. But I don't think trying to combine that with what's going through now, I think what is needed now is liquidity.

I mean the truth is, I've never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I've ever paid in my life.

The rest of the world really likes our stuff pretty well. It's just we buy so damn much of what they produce.

I did not think I would see the day when, you know, an AIG would not be able to have its checks clear.

I know that Congress will do the right thing.

I don't like what's going on with the executive compensation.

We are in effect making a - to some extent, making a choice between future inflation and getting our - getting off the floor. And we're likely - we're likely to have more inflation in the future as a consequence of the things we do to fight the present situation.

I think it's been, you know, kind of like a tragic play to this point. But at this point, I think it's clear, and will be clear to the majority of the Congress. I think it's clear to the American people that there is only one countervailing force to a world where financial institutions are trying to sell instruments every day and where credit has dried up, and that's the United States Treasury.

I would say the biggest single cause was we had an incredible residential real estate bubble.

I'm sitting with six and a half billion dollars we're going to use to close the Mars-Wrigley deal on October 6. I've got to hand over that six and a half billion on October 6. Now, I have to be very careful about who I leave it in between now and then, because they're expecting that he show up.

You know, with your money and my brains, I mean, there's no telling how far we'd go.

I've never been very fully employed either but just think of what it's like, you know, to go home with a mortgage payment you know and kids and everything else. My dad had that happen to him in the early '30s.

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

We've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.

I mean [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt didn't - you know, when he came in, he didn't print any money.

I think that they hoped the private sector would come in. And the private sector tried to come in until they saw the size of the problem. I mean, from were people on that weekend that thought they'd had a solution. And then the hole kept getting bigger and bigger. And all of a sudden became apparent that 20 billion wouldn't do it and 30 billion wouldn't do it and 40 billion wouldn't do it. So it got beyond anybody's ability to certainly to do it in a short period of time.

We have a country where I don't know whether it's a million households a year or more, but good form.

I think any time you couple the term "Wall Street" with "bailout" or something like that, you know - I don't like what's going on in Wall Street.

It's just that right now the athlete's on the floor. But we - this is a super athlete.

I don't know that I could draw one that's perfect. But I'd rather by approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down.

Goldman Sachs saying they might be interested in such an investment. I'm familiar with the company. I've known the management, the current management, Jack Welch before Jeff Immelt. I've known him for decades.

I've already written a section in the annual report for next year explaining why I think in one case that the figures on our balance sheet as calculated are wrong. But it's the standard way of doing it. It's holy writ. The SEC wants us to do it that way, and we'll do it that way, and I'll explain why I think it's wrong and shareholders can read it and see whether they agree with my logic or don't.

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.

We've got all the ingredients for a sensational future.

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.

I think it will get moving faster. I mean once you get it off the - once credit flows - now the recession is going to get worse.

I think the biggest thing we need is to unclog the credit markets, and we may need another stimulus - if we do, it's - it should go to the lower and middle-income people.

I can do anything I want, basically, as long as it doesn't involve athletic ability, or something like that.

If I got any good ideas out of that or I think they're good ideas, I'll be glad to contribute them but the system will probably overdo some other things.

If you owe money, you can't pay them out. You just pay for everything, you do smart things, you eventually get very rich.

That's the reality of what they're going to sell them to the Treasury for.

There is no question we have an access stock.

I don't want to give a lecture to this body that's out there. You know, I mean, having had the heart attack, I want to get it back functioning. And as a practical matter, I mean if you were Bear Stearns, and you were a shareholder, you know, you lost 90 to 95 percent of your money. A good many lost their jobs. They lost very cushy lives, many of them.

I think the rest of the country should be paying less, the 95 percent that [Barack] Obama talks about or maybe even a little higher than that.

I know the country works extremely well. You know, but when it isn't clogged up.

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.