Gems from Warren Buffett Quotes

“Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Lester Maddox, when Governor of Georgia, was criticized regarding the state’s abysmal prison system. ‘The solution’, he said, ‘is simple. All we need is a better class of prisoners.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Our inability to pinpoint a number doesn’t bother us: We would rather be approximately right than precisely wrong.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Good jockeys will do well on good horses, but not on broken-down nags.” -1989 letter”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“We neither understand the adding of unneeded people or activities because profits are booming, nor the cutting of essential people or activities because profitability is shrinking. That kind of yo-yo approach is neither business-like nor humane.” -1987 letter”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“An iron law of business is that growth eventually dampens exceptional economics.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“No matter how attractive the prospects of their business. We've never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person.” -1989 letter”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“what the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“The banking business is no favorite of ours. When assets are twenty times equity - a common ratio in this industry - mistakes that involve only a small portion of assets can destroy a major portion of equity. And mistakes have been the rule rather than the exception at many major banks. Most have resulted from a managerial failing that we described last year when discussing the ‘institutional imperative:’ the tendency of executives to mindlessly imitate the behavior of their peers, no matter how foolish it may be to do so. In their lending, many bankers played follow-the-leader with lemming-like zeal; now they are experiencing a lemming-like fate.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Over the years, Charlie 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 a pen than small sums with a gun.” -1988 letter”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“As one investor said in 2009 (regarding the effects of the Financial Crisis): ‘This is worse than divorce. I’ve lost half my net worth – and I still have my wife.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“the most elusive of human goals - keeping things simple and remembering what you set out to do.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“A promise is no better than the person or institution making it.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“long periods of substantial undervaluation and/or overvaluation will cause the gains of the business to be inequitably distributed among various owners, with the investment result of any given owner largely depending upon how lucky, shrewd, or foolish he happens to be.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Bull markets can obscure mathematical laws, but they cannot repeal them.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Occasional outbreaks of those two super-contagious diseases, fear and greed, will forever occur in the investment community. The timing of these epidemics will be unpredictable. And the market aberrations produced by them will be equally unpredictable, both as to duration and degree. Therefore, we never try to anticipate the arrival or departure of either disease. Our goal is more modest: we simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Forecasts’, said Sam Goldwyn, ‘are dangerous, particularly those about the future.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“In selecting common stocks, we devote our attention to attractive purchases, not to the possibility of attractive sales.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Time is the friend of the wonderful business.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“This devastating outcome for the shareholders indicates what can happen when much brain power and energy are applied to a faulty premise. The situation is suggestive of Samuel Johnson’s horse: ‘A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse - not a remarkable mathematician.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“If something’s not worth doing at all, it’s not worth doing well.’)”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“An iron law of business is that growth eventually dampens exceptional economics.” -1985”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“One of the lessons your management has learned - and, unfortunately, sometimes re-learned - is the importance of being in businesses where tailwinds prevail rather than headwinds.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“A small chance of distress or disgrace cannot, in our view, be offset by a large chance of extra returns.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking. When companies or investment professionals use terms such as "EBITDA" and "pro forma," they want you to unthinkingly accept concepts that are dangerously flawed.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“It has been far safer to steal large sums with a pen than small sums with a gun.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“After all, what are we paying the accountants for if it is not to deliver us the "truth" about our business. But the accountants' job is to record, not to evaluate. The evaluation job falls to investors and managers.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“The reaction of weak managements to weak operations is often weak accounting. (‘It’s difficult for an empty sack to stand upright.’)”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death – abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term ‘thinking outside the box.’ ” -2007 letter”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders

“Ben Graham taught me 45 years ago that in investing it is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results. In later life, I have been surprised to find that this statement holds true in business management as well. What a manager must do is handle the basics well and not get diverted.”
― Mark Gavagan, Gems from Warren Buffett: Wit and Wisdom from 34 Years of Letters to Shareholders