Warren Buffett · 246 pages
Rating: (4.2K votes)
“A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse—not a remarkable mathematician.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor “is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“So smile when you read a headline that says “Investors lose as market falls.” Edit it in your mind to “Disinvestors lose as market falls—but investors gain.” Though writers often forget this truism, there is a buyer for every seller and what hurts one necessarily helps the other. (As they say in golf matches: “Every putt makes someone happy.”)”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“as happens in Wall Street all too often, what the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“Having firstrate people on the team is more important than designing hierarchies and clarifying who reports to whom”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“(Thomas J. Watson Sr. of IBM followed the same rule: “I’m no genius,” he said. “I’m smart in spots—but I stay around those spots.”)”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“The requisites for board membership should be business savvy, interest in the job, and owner-orientation.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“this holding has proved extraordinarily profitable thanks to a move by your Chairman that combined luck and skill—110% luck, the balance skill.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“say, a 2:1 ratio than it is to have far greater coverage provided by a single utility. A catastrophic event can render a single utility insolvent—witness what”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“thought then that decent, intelligent, and experienced managers would automatically make rational business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so. Instead, rationality frequently wilts when the institutional imperative comes into play. For example: (1) As if governed by Newton’s First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me when we contemplate investing in businesses that in general look outstanding. All too often, we’ve seen value stagnate in the presence of hubris or of boredom that caused the attention of managers to wander.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don't know.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“Culture, more than rule books, determines how an organization behaves.”
― Warren Buffett, quote from The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
“It is said that the fear of public speaking is a fear greater than death for most people. According to psychiatrists, the fear of public speaking is caused by the fear of ostracism, the fear of standing out, the fear of criticism, the fear of ridicule, the fear of being an outcast. THE FEAR OF BEING DIFFERENT PREVENTS MOST PEOPLE FROM SEEKING NEW WAYS TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, quote from Rich Dad Poor Dad
“Curious, sometimes, how one’s thoughts seemed to swing in a kaleidoscope. It happened to me now. A bewildering shuffling and reshuffling of memories, of events. Then the mosaic settled into its true pattern.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Curtain: Poirot's Last Case
“Dad takes a step back, one hand still on my shoulder, and reaches into his pocket. He draws out a little blue capsule, and I feel every molecule in my body screaming to run. Dad must catch the panic in my eyes - he squeezes my shoulder and holds out the capsule. "Cas, it's fine. It's going to be fine. This is just in case."
Just in case. Just in case the worst happens. The ship falls. Durga fails, I fail, and the knowledge I carry as a Reckoner trainer must be disposed of. That information can't fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of people who will do anything to take down our beasts.
So this little capsule holds the pill that will kill me if it comes to that.
"It's waterproof," Dad continues, pressing it into my hand. "The pocket on the collar of your wetsuit, keep it there. It has to stay with you at all times."
It won't happen on this voyage. It's such a basic mission, gift-wrapped to be easy enough for me to handle on my own. But even holding the pill fills me with revulsion. On all my training voyages, I've never had to carry one of these capsules. That burden only goes to full-time trainers.
"Cas." Dad tilts my chin up, ripping my gaze from the pull. "You were born to do this. I promise you, you'll forget you even have it." I suppose he ought to know - he's been carrying one for two decades.
It's just a right of passage, I tell myself, and throw my arms around his neck once more.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“This above all: to thine own self be true.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Hamlet: An Authoritative Text, Intellectual Backgrounds, Extracts from the Sources, Essays in Criticism (Norton Critical Edition)
“And you telling me not all guys are like that doesn’t really help me feel better. Because some guys are like that. A lot of them, actually.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from Moxie
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.