Financial Statements Quotes

• You have to understand accounting and you have to understand the nuances of accounting. It's the language of business and it's an imperfect language, but unless you are willing to put in the effort to learn accounting - how to read and interpret financial statements - you really shouldn't select stocks yourself

  Warren Buffett

  Effort, Nuance, Imperfect

  54 Copy quote

• I call it the Rule of Three. If you read a company's financial statements three times, and you still can't figure out how they make their money, that's usually for a reason.

  James Chanos

  Three, Financial, Reason

  7 Copy quote

• You have more independent eyes scrutinizing the decision-making and financial statements of companies.

  Steve Odland

  Independent, Eye, Decision

  5 Copy quote

• Year-end financial statements express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.

  Alain de Botton

  Lying, Years, Year End

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

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• I think once you start putting phony figures into financial statements, you get in a lot of trouble. And we've seen so much of that in the last 20 years.

  Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Years, Lasts

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

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• When you are in the final days of your life, what will you want? Will you hug that college degree in the walnut frame? Will you ask to be carried to the garage so you can sit in your car? Will you find comfort in rereading your financial statement? Of course not. What will matter then will be people. If relationships will matter most then, shouldn't they matter most now?

  Max Lucado

  Inspirational, College, People

  Max Lucado (2009). “A Love Worth Giving: Living in the Overflow of God's Love”, p.160, Harper Collins

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• Since those don’t hit financial reports, the opportunities you had but didn’t accept, most people don’t bother thinking about them very much. At least that is a mistake we don’t make. We rub our own noses in our mistakes in blowing opportunities, as we just did.

  Charlie Munger

  Mistake, Omission, People

  BRK Annual Meeting, Morning Session, buffett.cnbc.com. May 1, 2004.

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• After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements, but have cost us many billions.

  Charlie Munger

  Mistake, Opportunity, Cost

  9 Copy quote

• Mandatory auditor rotation is designed to address a potential conflict of interest between a public company and its auditor. Because an auditor is hired and paid by the public company it audits, the auditor's desire to maintain a good relationship with its client could conflict with its duty to rigorously question the client's financial statements.

  Robert Pozen

  Relationship, Desire, Auditors

  "An Intermediate Approach to the Auditor Rotation Issue" by Robert Pozen, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 9, 2012.

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• You get in a lot of trouble when you start putting fictitious numbers on value. I think to just say, we're going to say a dollar of cash is worth $2 all of a sudden, it isn't worth $2. It's worth a dollar today. And I think once you start putting phony figures into financial statements, you get in a lot of trouble.

  Howard Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Numbers, Dollars

  4 Copy quote

• You will learn more about Donald Trump by going down to the federal elections, where I filed a 104-page essentially financial statement of sorts, the forms that they have. It shows income - in fact, the income - I just looked today - the income is filed at $694 million for this past year, $694 million. If you would have told me I was going to make that 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been very surprised.

  Donald Trump

  Past, Years, Income

  "The first Trump-Clinton presidential debate transcript, annotated" by Aaron Blake, www.washingtonpost.com. September 26, 2016.

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