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Berkshire Quotes & Sayings

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Top Berkshire Quotes

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Size will hurt returns. Look at Berkshire Hathaway - the last five things Warren has done have generated returns that are splendid by historical standards, but now give him $100 billion in assets and measure outcomes across all of it, it doesn't look so good. We can only buy big positions, and the only time we can get big positions is during a horrible period of decline or stasis. That really doesn't happen very often. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Taylor Swift

In middle school, my friends decided I was weird, and they didn't like my hair. They ditched me and talked behind my back, which is cool - I'm over it. [laughs] One time I called them and said, "Hey, do you want to go to the Berkshire Mall?" They all gave me excuses and said no. So I go to the mall with my mom, and don't you know, we run into all of them. Together. Shopping. My mom could see I was about to cry, so she said, "You know what? We're going to the King of Prussia mall," which was the mecca. — Taylor Swift

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

The Berkshire-style investors tend to be less diversified than other people. The academics have done a terrible disservice to intelligent investors by glorifying the idea of diversification. Because I just think the whole concept is literally almost insane. It emphasizes feeling good about not having your investment results depart very much from average investment results. But why would you get on the bandwagon like that if somebody didn't make you with a whip and a gun? — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

Mrs. B's story is well-known but worth telling again. She came to the United States 77 years ago, unable to speak English and devoid of formal schooling. In 1937, she founded the Nebraska Furniture Mart with $500. Last year the store had sales of $200 million, a larger amount by far than that recorded by any other home furnishings store in the United States. Our part in all of this began ten years ago when Mrs. B sold control of the business to Berkshire Hathaway, a deal we completed without obtaining audited financial statements, checking real estate records, or getting any warranties. In short, her word was good enough for us. Naturally, I was delighted to attend Mrs. B's birthday party. After all, she's promised to attend my 100th. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By C.S. Lewis

We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us:
"I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely. — C.S. Lewis

Berkshire Quotes By Graham Chapman

In 1945, peace broke out. It was the end of the Joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in 1950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again. — Graham Chapman

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

Alas, my "fiddle playing" will not get me to Carnegie Hall - or even to a high school recital. Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Treasury $3.3 billion for tax on its 2003 income, a sum equaling 2½% of the total income tax paid by all U.S. corporations in fiscal 2003. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

I'll be one year younger having missed my birthday and my mirror confirms it; so what's wrong with that. — Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance
checks and doublechecks and so forth
you could create a better result in the world. Well, Berkshire has had practically no process. We had hardly any internal auditing until they forced it on us. We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful whom we trust. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

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 occurswe will be selling life jackets to the unprepared. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting -based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

Go to bed when summers ends, what a good idea; wake up bright and early when birds announce its spring. — Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

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. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By William Poundstone

Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway. — William Poundstone

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

The truth is that I've got all my net worth safely in Berkshire and I will never sell a share so there is no one more concerned about what happens after my death than I am. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Using [a stock's] 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. Some great businesses have very volatile returns - for example, See's [a candy company owned by Berkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year - and some terrible businesses can have steady results. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

The reason we avoid the word 'synergy' is because people generally claim more synergistic benefits than will come. Yes, it exists, but there are so many false promises.Berkshire is full of synergies - we don't avoid synergies, just claims of synergies. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

If you have the opportunities of Berkshire, an investment in gold is dumb. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

I'm a bull on Berkshire Hathaway. There may be some considerable waiting, but I think there are some good days ahead. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

We don't have an isolated group [of senior managers] surrounded by servants. Berkshire's headquarters is a tiny little suite. We just came back from Berkshire's board meeting; it had moved up to the board room of the Kiewit company and [it was so large and luxurious that] I felt uncomfortable. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Eddie Huang

The reason we use all natural, hormone-free, antibiotic-free Berkshire pork belly, beef, and chicken is that it's the right thing to do. — Eddie Huang

Berkshire Quotes By Anonymous

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Tolkien, J.R.R.) - Your Highlight on Location 529-531 | Added on Friday, December 26, 2014 8:28:31 PM Do you think Tom Bombadil, the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside, could be made into the hero of a story? Or is he, as I suspect, fully enshrined in the enclosed verses?1 Still I could enlarge the portrait. — Anonymous

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

There are exceptional loyalties and there are old fashion ideas about how you get loyalties, and after all the auditorium is full of people who have co-owned shares with the managers for many decades, and in many cases they co-invested when everyone was young and obscure. Also when you come back to a place like that you are celebrating old loyalties, and of course the basic idea behind so much of Berkshire is the old fashioned idea that the best way to get loyalty is to deserve loyalty. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

I think the foundation at Berkshire [Buffett's stake in Berkshirewill pass to the Buffett Foundation upon his death] will be a plus because there will be a continuation of the culture. We'd still take in fine businesses run by people who love them. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

He is also experienced. Though I don't know Ralph's age, I do know that, like many of our managers, he is over 65. At Berkshire, we look to performance, not to the calendar. Charlie and I, at 71 and 64 respectively, now keep George Foreman's picture on our desks. You can make book that our scorn for a mandatory retirement age will grow stronger every year. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

I remember the day I started school; my mother's tears as I skipped away; birthdays with candles on the cake, too soon too many abandoned for the mess they made. — Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

Fund consultants like to require style boxes such as "long-short," "macro," "international equities." At Berkshire our only style box is "smart." — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Lawrence A. Cunningham

What, then, is Berkshire's moat? The answer: Berkshire's distinctive corporate culture. Berkshire spent the last five decades acquiring a group of wholly owned subsidiaries of bewildering variety but united by a set of distinctive core values. The result is a corporate culture unlike any other. And this is Berkshire's moat. — Lawrence A. Cunningham

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Berkshire has the lowest turnover of any major company in the U.S.The Walton family owns more of Wal-Mart than Buffett owns of Berkshire, so it isn't because of large holdings. It's because we have a really unusual shareholder body that thinks of itself as owners and not holders of little pieces of paper. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Robert Winder

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere.
The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came. — Robert Winder

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

We bought a doomed textile mill [Berkshire Hathaway] and a California S&L [Wesco] just before a calamity. Both were bought at a discount to liquidation value. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

The Great Bubble ended on March 10, 2000 (though we didn't realize that fact until some months later). On that day, the NASDAQ (recently 1,731) hit its all-time high of 5,132. That same day, Berkshire shares traded at $40,800, their lowest price since mid-1997. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

I have got this letter which actually goes out the day after I die. It has already been written. And it says that: "Yesterday I died". And then it says: "That's bad news for me, but it's not bad news for you, the shareholders of Berkshire". And then I go on and explain what is going to happen. I know that is one time when they will be really interested in hearing from me. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

Booze is flowing all unknowing; grandma downs a few, smiles and giggles happily enjoying her new brew. — Francis Norris, 1st Earl Of Berkshire

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Alice Schroeder

He has a really consistent routine. He comes in in the morning at around 8:30. He reads five newspapers. He reads The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Omaha World Herald. Then he has a stack of reports on his desk from the companies Berkshire owns, and some trade press like American Banker or oil and gas journals, and through the rest of the day, he alternates between flipping through this stuff and then talking on the phone to people either who call him or who he calls. He never calls his managers; they can call him. He is really accessible, but he leaves them alone.
Then he has CNBC on all day long with the crawl, with the sound muted and if he sees his name cross along the bottom and they are talking about him, he will turn the sound on to find out what they are saying. That is his day. He doesn't do meetings
there are no meetings.
Alice Schroeder

Berkshire Quotes By Virginia Woolf

Even his sleep was full of dreams. He dreamt as he had not dreamt since the old days at Three Mile Cross - of hares starting from the long grass; of pheasants rocketing up with long tails streaming, of partridges rising with a whirr from the stubble. He dreamt that he was hunting, that he was chasing some spotted spaniel, who fled, who escaped him. He was in Spain; he was in Wales; he was in Berkshire; he was flying before park-keepers' truncheons in Regent's Park. Then he opened his eyes. There were no hares, and no partridges; no whips cracking and no black men crying "Span! Span!"

There was only Mr. Browning in the armchair talking to Miss Barrett on the sofa. — Virginia Woolf

Berkshire Quotes By Roger Lowenstein

Buffett's methodology was straightforward, and in that sense 'simple.' It was not simple in the sense of being easy to execute. Valuing companies such as Coca-Cola took a wisdom forged by years of experience; even then, there was a highly subjective element. A Berkshire stockholder once complained that there were no more franchises like Coca-Cola left. Munger tartly rebuked him. 'Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well two or three times, will make your family rich for life? — Roger Lowenstein

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Every business tries to turn this year's success into next year's greater success. It's hard for me to see why Microsoft is sinful to do this. If it's a sin, then I hope all of Berkshire Hathaway's subsidiaries are sinners. Someone whose salary is paid by U.S.taxpayers is happy to dramatically weaken the one place where we're winning big?! — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Berkshire was built on the eternal verities: basic mathematics, basic horse sense, basic fear, and basic diagnosis of human nature to make predictions regarding human behavior. We stuck to the basics with a certain amount of discipline and it has worked out quite well. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Thomas Peterffy

My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School. — Thomas Peterffy

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Like the stocks of both Berkshire and Wesco to trade within hailing distance of what we think of as intrinsic value. When it runs up, we try to talk it down. That's not at all common in Corporate America, but that's the way we act. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

I'd say that Berkshire Hathaway's system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is. We've really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money's been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who've made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

This is an amazingly sound place. We are more disaster-resistant than most other places. We haven't pushed it as hard as other people would have pushed it. I don't want to go back to Go. I've been to Go. A lot of our shareholders have a majority of their net worth in Berkshire, and they don't want to go back to Go either. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Berkshire's whole record has been achieved without paying one ounce of attention to the efficient market theory in its hard form. And not one ounce of attention to the descendants of that idea, which came out of academic economics and went into corporate finance and morphed into such obscenities as the capital asset pricing model, which we also paid no attention to. I think you'd have to believe in the tooth fairy to believe that you could easily outperform the market by seven-percentage points per annum just by investing in high volatility stocks. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Christie Hefner

The very first stock I bought right out of college was Berkshire Hathaway. — Christie Hefner

Berkshire Quotes By Anonymous

Wouldn't you rather see the real Amsterdam?' No, Cat, dammit, no! I had no desire to see the real Amsterdam. We had reality back in Berkshire, that's not why we were here; we had no interest in the way things really were. A perfectly co-ordinated schedule of sightseeing was unravelling before my eyes. 'If we don't go to the Anne Frank House today, the whole plan falls apart.' I felt myself getting shrill. — Anonymous

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better. — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Walter Schloss

By setting up Berkshire Hathaway, Warren has done everything very rationally. — Walter Schloss

Berkshire Quotes By Warren Buffett

When Berkshire buys common stock, we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business. — Warren Buffett

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

One of the smartest things a person can do is dampen investment expectations, especially with Berkshire. That would be mature and responsible. I like our model and we should do nicely — Charlie Munger

Berkshire Quotes By Steve Burke

I'm a very competitive person ... I've run 12 marathons! I kayaked around Manhattan 29 miles in October! I ran the Berkshire Hathaway 5K! And I want every part of the business to compete - and play to win. — Steve Burke

Berkshire Quotes By Charlie Munger

Berkshire's past record has been almost ridiculous. If Berkshirehad used even half the leverage of, say, Rupert Murdoch, it would be five times its current size. — Charlie Munger