"So, guys, how did the trip to Japan go? Did you get the software installed?" "It was great! The clients loved us and are super happy about the installation! The boss even took us out for dinner the last night ...
"People who are excited by posthumous fame forget that the people who remember them will soon die too. And those after them in turn. Until their memory, passed from one to another like a candle flame, gutters and goes out ...
"It wasn't luck that made them fly; it was hard work and common sense; they put their whole heart and soul and all their energy into an idea and they had the faith." - John T. Daniels, recalling the first ...
"If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy. If you demand hard work, work hard. If you want your colleagues to level with you, level with them. It's not very complicated!" -- John C. Bogle, Enough: True Measures of Money, ...
Great books represent a terrific value proposition. For a modest amount of money, or even free of charge at the local library, a reader can gain access to some of the greatest minds in human history. We take it for ...
There are many aspects of life where the link between cause and effect is very clear. Humans, as well as many other animals, quickly learn that taking a certain action invariably leads to a predictable and reliable result. For example, ...
"Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings!" -- Richard Feynman The goal of many websites is to create "evergreen" content -- that is, content that stands the test of time and will prove to be relevant ...
"Compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world. He who understands it earns it. He who doesn't pays it." -- Attributed to Albert Einstein The quote above has often been attributed to Albert Einstein although there is some controversy ...
"It can't possibly be this easy!" A first time attendee of a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting might find it hard to believe that there could be any skeptics in the crowd. In contrast to the boring, useless, and perfunctory meetings ...
"The settling of the country, the machine age, the coming of the automobile, telephone, movies, radio, the advances in fine arts and all the sciences, demanded that our capacity to accept and use new ideas be developed to a point ...
The idea of cutting out the middleman has always been an attractive concept because doing so promises to lower costs and produce potential benefits for both sides of a commercial transaction. However, the role of intermediaries in the economy has ...
The team of six, three men and three women, pretended not to know each other and made their way to the baccarat tables at the Dunes casino in Las Vegas. It was the spring of 1963 and Las Vegas was ...
"There is always something to do. You just need to look harder, be creative and a little flexible." -- Irving Kahn One of the interesting aspects of the stock market involves the peculiar attitude many investors have when it comes ...
"Treat what you don't have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you'd crave them if you didn't have them. But be careful. Don't feel such satisfaction that you start ...
The belief that human beings are fundamentally rational individuals is perhaps the most important foundational element of modern economics. While no economist would ever claim that all individuals are rational all the time, it has long been thought that rational ...
Periods of major step changes in technology present serious challenges to investors, particularly those who have significant interests in incumbent firms. In retrospect, one can confidently point to inflection points that represent technology shifts with enormous impacts on human history ...
Is it possible to reliably identify great managers and their companies at an early stage and enjoy compound annual returns of twenty or even thirty percent over many decades? We recently explored this subject in some detail using Berkshire Hathaway ...
In the spring of 1954, Bill Child was a new graduate of the University of Utah preparing to start a career as a school teacher in a rural town thirty miles north of Salt Lake City. Within weeks, he was ...
"I would say that more dumb acquisitions are made in the name of strategic plans than any other. I would be very wary if a board went through some elaborate process where a strategic plan was reviewed in great detail ...
"The elementary part of psychology—the psychology of misjudgment, as I call it—is a terribly important thing to learn. There are about 20 little principles. And they interact, so it gets slightly complicated. But the guts of it is unbelievably important." ...