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41 " The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine,” Buffett said. “So if you had your choice, if you could put a hundred million dollars into a business that earns twenty percent on that capital—twenty million—ideally, it would be able to earn twenty percent on a hundred twenty million the following year and on a hundred forty-four million the following year and so on. You could keep redeploying capital at [those] same returns over time. But there are very, very, very few businesses like that...we can move that money around from those businesses to buy more businesses. "
― Alice Schroeder , The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
42 " There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it. "
43 " Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. "
44 " Remember one thing, Warren: Money isn’t making that much difference in how you and I live. We’re both going down to the cafeteria for lunch and working every day and having a good time. So don’t worry too much about money, because it won’t make much difference in how you live. "
45 " Balzac said that behind every great fortune lies a crime.1 That’s not true at Berkshire. "
46 " I had these Whitman coin boards with slots for the coins. I said to Don, ‘It looks to me like we could take these coin boards and use them as molds for casting slugs.’ “Danly was the brains of the operation. And so, sure enough, he learned how to pour these molds for casting slugs, and I supplied the coin boards. We would try to use the slugs for vending machines for soda pop and things like that. Our basic formula was to have our income in currency and our outgo in slugs. "
47 " Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless. "
48 " The Buffetts followed the trail blazed by earlier SUVs a few miles onward from the airport to the tiny town of Ketchum, near the turnoff to the Elkhorn Pass. A few miles later, they rounded Dollar Mountain, where a green oasis appeared, nestled among the brown slopes. Here amid the lacy pines and shimmering aspens lay Sun Valley, the mountains’ most fabled resort. "
49 " Praise by name, criticize by category. "
50 " As longtime friends observed, Howie was a “hell-raiser.” The inexhaustible Buffett energy poured from him in such a whirlwind that he was nicknamed the Tornado, a cousin to Warren’s childhood nickname, Firebolt—but with a very different connotation. "
51 " By the late 1960s, however, the rising market had made investing in stocks less viable. The advantage of celebrity when trying to buy entire businesses began to outweigh the benefit of secrecy in buying stocks. "
