Howard Warren Buffett Quotes

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Capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system.

Howard Warren Buffett

Perfect, May, Capitalism

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime". "The Charlie Rose Show", www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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Soil is a living ecosystem and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil.

Howard Warren Buffett

Ecosystems, Soil, Assets

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If you really think that houses prices are going to go up next year and the year after, you feel if I don't buy it this year, I'm going to have to buy it next year. [...] And when somebody makes it very easy for you to do it by saying you don't really have to put up my money, you can lie about your income a little, or we'll give you 100 percent mortgage, you're going to do it, because everybody that's done it has been proven right. You have what they call social tools, and, you know, you're going to feel like an idiot if you didn't do it, because the house cost more.

Howard Warren Buffett

Lying, Thinking, Years

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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I mean people -- people don't get -- they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed and you can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is, and he's doing these things, you know, and he's getting rich, and your spouse is getting unhappy with you because you aren't doing -- pretty soon you start doing it. And so you get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots.

Howard Warren Buffett

Mean, People, Greed

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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Somebody'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 Buffett

Mean, Ideas, Buying

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We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.

Howard Warren Buffett

War, Mean, Epidemics

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Resolution Trust Company was set up to liquidate a bunch of assets that the government had inherited because the savings and loans went broke. So the savings and loans went broke, the government stepped in, paid off depositors, and now they're left with this mass of assets to sell. We're not talking about selling here, we're talking about buying intelligently. They were selling what they got handed to them by a bunch of savings and loan operators that had in many cases had done some very dumb thing. But their job was to liquidate it. And they liquidated.

Howard Warren Buffett

Jobs, Government, Talking

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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The commercial paper market, when that dries up, you know, that's just like sucking the blood out of the economic body of the United States.

Howard Warren Buffett

Blood, United States, Paper

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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The U.S. Treasury has got borrowing costs like nobody else has. They can borrow basically unlimited amounts. They can stay there for years and years. These assets will be worth more money over time.

Howard Warren Buffett

Years, Cost, Assets

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime". "The Charlie Rose Show", www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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I mean the whole economy just comes to a grinding halt. Competence in markets and in institutions, it's a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don't even think about it. Indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it's gone for five minutes, it's the only thing you think about. And the oxygen has been sucked out of the credit markets.

Howard Warren Buffett

Mean, Thinking, Oxygen

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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Confidence is key. You're not going to leave your money with me unless you're confident I'm going to give it back to you. And at this point, when treasury bills, seven day treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent, it's not because people want to earn 1/20th of one percent, it's because they trust the fact the treasury will give it back to them next week.

Howard Warren Buffett

Keys, Next Week, People

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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If you owe money, you can't pay them out. You just pay for everything, you do smart things, you eventually get very rich. If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball. [...] And everybody thinks they're going to leave at two minutes to 12.

Howard Warren Buffett

Zero, Smart, Thinking

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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You could have these crazy Internet valuations in the late 1990s, but they prove themselves out in the market. The next day they were selling for more than they were the day before, and people said, you know, you're crazy if you don't get in on this. So it's very human.

Howard Warren Buffett

Crazy, Next Day, People

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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The good thing is, we have household formation in this country. We have a country where I don't know whether it's a million households a year or more, but good form.

Howard Warren Buffett

Country, Years, Good Things

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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I 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

Payroll Tax, Government, Suffering

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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We have a terrific economy, it's like a great athlete that's had a cardiac arrest.

Howard Warren Buffett

Athlete, Economy, Cardiac

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You may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing. I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.

Howard Warren Buffett

Military, Mean, Mad

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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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 Buffett

Jobs, Spring, War

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it.

Howard Warren Buffett

Government, Investing, Mortgage

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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You can go back to tulip bulbs in Holland 400 years ago. The human beings going through combinations of fear and greed and all of that sort of thing, their behavior can lead to bubbles. And it may have had and Internet bubble at one time, you've had a farm bubble, farmland bubble in the Midwest which resulted in all kinds of tragedy in the early '80s.

Howard Warren Buffett

Years, Greed, Tragedy

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime". "The Charlie Rose Show", www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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Any time I can be of help to the government in terms of giving advice -I've given a little advice, actually.

Howard Warren Buffett

Government, Giving, Advice

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I don't think it would be crazy to have a model or an entity model on the Reconstruction Finance Corp. That goes back to 1932, although it was really implemented in '33 under Jesse Jones, and it invested in mostly banks initially and preferred stock and that sort of thing.

Howard Warren Buffett

Crazy, Thinking, Would Be

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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I've never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I've ever paid in my life. Now, that's crazy. And if you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or whomever around their office. On average. And so I think that actually people in my situation should be paying more tax. I think the rest of the country should be paying less.

Howard Warren Buffett

Country, Crazy, Thinking

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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When people talk about cash being king, it's not king if it just sits there and never does anything. There are times when cash buys more than other times, and this is one of the other times when it buys a fair amount more, so we use it.

Howard Warren Buffett

Kings, People, Doe

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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I think it's terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor.

Howard Warren Buffett

Thinking, People, Income

"Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime - Charlie Rose Interview". Interview with Charlie Rose, www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

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Latest quotes from interviews

"I 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,

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