I thought
this was pretty good for a Monday....
1. The way to live a good life is to write your obituary and live it backwards.
2. Go to sleep each night a little less stupid than you were when you woke up.
3. Over-competitiveness corrupts even the best of people.
4. Incentives drive behaviour more than anything.
5. Don't have an opinion unless you can state the arguments against your position better than the people in opposition.
6. The best way to get what you want is do deserve what you want.
7. Invert. Always. Think about the biggest screw-up is. And work like hell to avoid it.
8. Underspend your income.
9. Learn the big ideas in all the disciplines. Pay no heed to sectoral boundaries. And cross-apply like crazy.
10. Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification
11. It's not supposed to be easy
12. The big money is not in the buying and selling... but in the waiting.
13. "I think I'm rational, and that's a moral imperative to me. I don't want to be anything else."
14. Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.
15. Take a simple idea seriously.
16. If you want to be a good partner, be a good partner.
17. A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage
18. Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.
19. Don't be the patsy.
20. Being prepared will improve your life.
21. The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.
22. There's no genius in knowing what to do. The genius is doing it.
23. To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
24. I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge.
25. I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have ever figured out.
26. The number one way to get ahead is to avoid doing dumb things.
27. I don't have any wonderful insights that other people don't have. I just happen to avoid certain gross follies.
28. You don't have to be smarter than the rest; you have to be more disciplined than the rest.
29. All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.
30. The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.
31. Do the right thing.
32. It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid.
33. No wise pilot fails to use his checklist.
34. Assume life will be really tough, and then ask if you can handle it. If the answer is yes, you've won.
35. Never feel sorry for yourself.
36. Sometimes it booms and sometimes it busts. Pay no heed. Go about your business.
37. Bad incentives will destroy.
38. Take the high road. It's far less crowded.
39. I don't think much of a man who doesn't know more today than he did yesterday.
40. It's not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
41. Patience is the key to success not speed. Time is a friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
42. If you want to improve your odds of reaching big goals, read 500 pages daily.
43. Our approach has always been to look for a no-brainer decision.
44. You must learn how to handle mistakes and new information that changes the odds.
45. We're trying to find the easy job, because we're not smart enough to do the hard job.
46. Don't think short term
47. The best way to get a good spouse is to deserve a good spouse.
48. Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.
49. It's amazing how much trouble you can avoid if you're trying to do the right thing.
50. If you want ants to come, you put sugar on the floor.51. Our game is to recognize a big idea when it comes along when one doesn't come along very often.
52. Simplicity has a way of improving performance by enabling us to better understand what we are doing.
53. In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time - none, zero
54. When you mix raisins and turds, you've still got turds
55. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span
56. A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price
57. Whenever you think something or some person is ruining your life, it's you. A victimization mentality is so debilitating
58. If you want to understand science, you have to understand math. The good thing about business is that you don't have to know any higher math
59. We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one
60. Recognize reality even when you don't like it. Especially when you don't like it
61. A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail
62. Those of us who have been very fortunate have a duty to give back
63. Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets, and can be lost in a heartbeat
64. There's no way that you can live an adequate life without making many mistakes65. Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am
66. I have a black belt in chutzpah. I was born with it
67. It never ceases to amaze me to see how much territory can be grasped if one merely masters and consistently uses all the obvious and easily learned principles
68. The biggest mistake is in not learning from the past
69. It's not the bad ideas that do you in, but the good ones
70. Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom
71. Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world
72. If you don't allow for self-serving bias in the conduct of others, you are, again, a fool
73. The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting
74. Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues
75. I don’t have a single achievement I’m all that proud of
76. We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time
77. What do you want to avoid? Such an easy answer: sloth and unreliability
78. Another thing that does one in, of course, is the self-serving bias
79. There’s only one way to the top: hard work
80. Do what you like and are good three rules for a career: Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself; Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire; Work only with people you enjoy
81. Almost all good businesses engage in 'pain today, gain tomorrow' activities
82. It takes character to sit with all that cash and to do nothing
83. Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass
84. People who cannot be alone with their own thoughts for a long time are terrible candidates to become successful investors
85. We recognized early on that smart people do very dumb things, and we wanted to know why
86. A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments
87. Someone will always be getting richer faster than you. This is not a tragedy
88. The desire to get rich fast is pretty dangerous89. Patience is not just a virtue; it’s a strategy
90. Success comes from making rational decisions based on facts, not emotions
91. I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom91. Neither Warren nor I are smart enough to make decisions with no time to think
92. You’d be amazed at how much Warren reads – and at how much I read
93. We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too tough to understand
94. If something is too hard, we move on to something else95. You must force yourself to consider opposing arguments
96. There’s a tendency to think that our present politicians are much worse than any we had in the past
97. There isn’t a single formula. You need to know a lot about business and human nature
98. Choose clients as you would friends
99. The really big opportunities in life will be very few. So when you find a lollapalooza, and you can see it, don’t hang back like a timid rabbit. Step boldly and grab it. And don’t do it small.
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