I mean, the job is Pearl Harbor. And you better not spends weeks and weeks and weeks trying to assign blame or deciding on a complete plan for fighting the whole war, you know, and letting a committee decide where the battleships should go and all of that. You better spring into action with the best people you have.
Howard Warren BuffettAs long as you have markets, you'll have excesses. People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started. I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter.
Howard Warren BuffettCapitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system.
Howard Warren BuffettThe ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century.
Howard Warren BuffettSomebody's buying these treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent. I mean we consuming about $2 billion a day of goods and services beyond what we're producing.And it reflects American's consumption ideas rather than its savings ideas.
Howard Warren BuffettI love to tell how I'm suffering because one percent we're paying 25 percent of the total. We're not paying 25 percent of the total taxes on individuals. We're paying maybe 25 percent of the income tax, but the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains. They don't take that from me on dividends. They take from the woman who comes in and takes the wastebaskets out.
Howard Warren Buffett