See Part 1 of this list of best quotes from Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, Financial)(BRK.B, Financial)'s annual shareholder meeting 2019 here.
51. “We’ll do our best to enlarge the circle of competence of the people at Berkshire so we don’t miss so many. But we’ll miss a lot in the future. We’ve missed a lot in the past. The main thing to do is find things where our batting average is going to be high. And if we miss the biggest ones, that really doesn’t bother us as long as the things we do with money work out okay.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
52. “You’ve got way more competition now, but if you get to know even about a relatively small area more than other people do and you don’t feel a compulsion to act too often, you wait till the odds are strongly in your favor, it’s still a very interesting game.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
53. “I think the great strategy for the great mass of humanity is to specialize. Nobody wants to go to a doctor that’s half proctologist and half dentist.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
54. “If you know even one thing very well, it’ll give you an edge at some point.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
55. “We committed $10 billion a week ago and there are conditions under which – and they’re not remote, they’re not likely in any given week or month or year – but there are conditions under which we could spend $100 billion very, very quickly. And if those conditions existed, it would be capital very well deployed and much better than in an index fund. We’re operating on the basis that we will get chances to deploy capital. They will come in clumps in all likelihood. And they will come when other people don’t want to deploy capital.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
56. “We’re not going to change.” Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
57. “We do like having a lot of money to be able to operate very fast and very big.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
58. “The one thing you should very definitely understand about Berkshire is that we run the business in a way that we think is consistent with serving shareholders who have virtually all of their net worth in Berkshire.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
59. “Certainly in the next 20 or 30 years there’ll be two or three times when it’ll be raining gold and all you have to do is go outside.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
60. “The one thing you should very definitely understand about Berkshire is that we run the business in a way that we think is consistent with serving shareholders who have virtually all of their net worth in Berkshire.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
61. “Regulation can be a pain in the neck generally, but on the other hand we don’t want a bunch of charlatans operating in the insurance business.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
62. “I like the fact that there is regulation in the insurance business or the banking business. It doesn’t mean that it can’t drive you crazy sometimes or anything of the sort, but those businesses should be regulated. They’re too important. Any time you can take other people’s money and they go home with a promise and you go home with the money, I don’t mind a certain amount of regulation in those businesses.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
63. “I absolutely believe that we should have a regulation system that involves prohibition of risk-taking by banks. It got particularly bad in the investment banks at the peak of the real estate crisis and there was only word for the behavior – it was disgusting. And it was pretty much everybody.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
64. “I find any kind of regulation irritating but, nevertheless, it’s good for the system.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
65. “As Charlie said, you wouldn’t want to be a bank that ran in an unregulated system where anybody could come in and do all kinds of things that would actually have consequences that drew you into the problems that they created themselves. We had the Wild West in banking long ago and it produced a lot of problems in the 19th century.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
66. “I suppose I should be watching every tiny little business down to the next nickel, but I don’t. And I don’t want that much detail. And I think our competitors would like it and it wouldn’t do our shareholders any good. So we’ll probably just keep going the way we do.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
67. “China – it’s a big market. And we like big markets. We really can only deploy capital in a major way maybe in 15 or so countries just because of the size.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
68. “It really makes sense for the two countries to get along. Think of how stupid it would be if China and the United States didn’t get along. Stupid on both sides I might add.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
69. "I gave an interview to The Financial Times, and I don’t do that very often, but one of the considerations I have is I would like to see Berkshire better known in both the U.K. and Europe. And The Financial Times audience was an audience that I hoped would think of Berkshire more often in terms of when businesses are for sale.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
70. “We’d love to put more money into the U.K. If I get a call tomorrow and somebody says I’ve got an x-billion pound company that I think might make sense for you to own and that I would like to actually have as a part of Berkshire, I’ll get on the plane and be over there.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
71. "We’re hoping for a deal in the U.K. and/or in Europe no matter how Brexit comes out.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
72. “I’m not an Englishman, but I have a feeling it was a mistake to vote to leave.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
73. “If you asked me how I’d vote on Brexit if I lived in Britain, I don’t even know. It just strikes me as a horrible problem. And I’m glad it’s theirs, not mine.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
74. “Our problem was not a lack of boots on the ground. Our problem was people on the ground are paying prices that we don’t want to pay.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
75. “It’s not in the shareholders interest that we get to be like everybody else.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
76. “No matter what was going right in my life, if things were going badly at Berkshire, I wouldn’t feel good.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
77. “I think Berkshire is better situated than it’s ever been except for the fact that size is a drag on performance.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
78. “This culture is special. It can work. It won’t be the highest compounder by a long shot against many other businesses. I think it’ll be one of the safest ways to make decent money over time.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
79. “We have a lot going for us, and I’m satisfied.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
80. “I don’t know whether we’ll outperform the S&P 500 or not. I know that we’ll behave with our shareholders’ money exactly as we would behave with our own money. And we will basically tie our fortunes in life to this business and we will be very cognizant of doing anything that can destroy value in any significant way. But if there were to be a very strong bull market from this point forward we would probably underperform during that period. If the market five years from now or ten years from now is at this level or below, we will probably overperform.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
81. “There’d be one big advantage for the shareholders that pay taxes. The Berkshire shareholders, even if we just matched the S&P, we’d be way ahead after taxes.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
82. “On March 31 actually one is modestly ahead, one is modestly behind. But they are extraordinary managers. It’s been a tough period to beat the S&P.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
83. “They’ve also helped us in just all kinds of ways. What Todd has done in connection with the medical initiative we have with JPMorgan (JPM, Financial) and Amazon (AMZN, Financial). I don’t know how many hours per week he’s worked totally on that. The things they’ve brought to me. What Ted did in terms of the Home Capital Group (TSX:HCB, Financial) where we have essentially in a major way we stabilized a financial institution that was under attack and experiencing runs in Canada and he did the whole thing. I heard about that on a Monday and on Wednesday we put in an offer for the company and previously to that they probably had dozens and dozens of people combing over them and meanwhile they were struggling. And it was remarkable what he did, and I think it was appreciated in the Toronto area. We are enormously better off because the two are with us. I’ll just put it this way – they’re doing better than I am.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
84. “I wouldn’t think of the credit card business as a one-model business any more than I would think of the car business as essentially being one model. Ferrari’s going to make a lot of money, but they’re going to have just a portion of the market. Amex is growing around the world with individuals, it’s growing around the world with small businesses.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
85. “I like our American Express (AXP, Financial) position very well.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
86. “I have no opinion about technology.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
87. “I don’t think the Occidental (OXY, Financial) transaction will be the last one we’ll do. There may be one in a month. There may be not. There may be one three or four years from now. It won’t be identical. I hope it’s larger. The point is: We’re very likely to get the call.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
88. “We don’t have any formula that evaluates risk, but we certainly make our own calculation of risk versus reward in every transaction we do.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
89. “The success of the auto companies getting into the insurance business are probably about as likely as the success of the insurance companies getting into the auto business. I worry much more about Progressive than all of the auto company possibilities I could see getting into the insurance business. It’s not an easy business at all. And I would bet against any company in the auto business being any kind of an unusual success.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) (on Tesla (TSLA, Financial))
90. “Using the internet to shop for cars is like using the internet to shop for anything. It’s another competitor.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
91. “My estate will have basically nothing but Berkshire in it for some time as it gets dispersed to philanthropies.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
92. “I have a lot of confidence in the ability of the Berkshire culture to endure. And that we have the right people to make sure that that happens. I’m betting my entire net worth on that. And that doesn’t give me pause at all.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
93. “I don’t own any indexes. I have always been willing to own just two or three stocks. And I have not minded that everybody who teaches finance in law school and business schools teaches that what I’m doing is wrong. It isn’t wrong. It’s worked beautifully. I don’t think you need a portfolio of 50 stocks if you know what you’re doing. And I hope my heirs will just sit.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
94. “The issue is not how we get along. The issue is how is it going to work when we’re gone? And the answer is fine. It’s going to work fine.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
95. “Having the right partners in life is enormously important. It’s more fun with a partner both in personal life and in business life. You’ll probably get more accomplished too. But you’ll just have a better time.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
96. “I recommend that you look for somebody better than you are and then try to be like they are.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
97. “Obviously under any conditions you should expand your circle of competence if you can.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
98. “The world is going to change. It’s going to keep changing. It’s changing every day. That makes it interesting. As it changes certainly within what you think is your present existing circle, you should be the master of figuring that one out, or it really isn’t your circle of competence.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
99. “I've just seen genius after genius, with a great record, and pretty soon they’ve got $30 billion and two floors of young men, and away goes the record. It gets hard as the money goes up.” – Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio)
100. “If you really want to make 50% on a million and you’re willing to work on it, that’s doable. But it really has no applicability to managing huge sums.” – Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)
Not a Premium Member of GuruFocus? Sign up for a free 7-day trial here
