Sensible lessons about life and investing in general are few and far between.
- The big money is not in the buying and the selling, but in the waiting.
- People calculate too much and think too little.
- Those who keep learning, will keep rising in life. (also: If you keep learning all the time you have a huge advantage.)
- You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments. Especially when they challenge your best-loved ideas.
- This habit of committing far more time to learning and thinking than to doing is no accident.
- Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.
- Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.
- Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets—and can be lost in a heartbeat.
- I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out. I don’t believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody’s that smart…
- We (Warren Buffett and I) both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.
- We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too tough to understand.
- It’s not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.
- It takes the character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing. I didn’t get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.
- Invest in a business any fool can run, because someday a fool will. If it won’t stand a little mismanagement, it’s not much of a business.
- Our game is to recognize a big idea when it comes along when one doesn’t come along very often. Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.
- When you borrow a man’s car, always return it with a tank of gas.
- “Quickly identify mistakes and take action.”
- “Part of what you must learn is how to handle mistakes and new facts that change the odds. Life, in part, is like a poker game, wherein you have to learn to quit sometimes when holding a much loved hand.”
- We recognized early on that very smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why and who, so that we could avoid them.
- Is there such a thing as a cheerful pessimist? That’s what I am.
- Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.
My favourites are 10 and 16. Few people want to spend time thinking in fact a recent study I came across suggested that people would much rather receive a mild electrical shock to their genitals than spend eight minutes alone thinking. I could also add to 16 that as a passenger you never ever touch the radio.
