Top 38 Berkshire Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School.
Thomas Peterffy
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. The very first stock I bought right out of college was Berkshire Hathaway.
Christie Hefner
#7. I'm a bull on Berkshire Hathaway. There may be some considerable waiting, but I think there are some good days ahead.
Charlie Munger
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
William Poundstone
#11. At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers.
Charlie Munger
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Fund consultants like to require style boxes such as "long-short," "macro," "international equities." At Berkshire our only style box is "smart."
Warren Buffett
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. If you have the opportunities of Berkshire, an investment in gold is dumb.
Charlie Munger
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. When Berkshire buys common stock, we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business.
Warren Buffett
#30. We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.
Charlie Munger
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. By setting up Berkshire Hathaway, Warren has done everything very rationally.
Walter Schloss
#34. 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
#38. 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
