If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don't own it for 10 minutes.
Interpretation
Be cautious about the things you own, ensuring they bring long-term value rather than short-term satisfaction.
This quote by Warren Buffett emphasizes the importance of being thoughtful in our purchases and commitments. It suggests that if you are not willing to invest in an item for a significant amount of time, it may not be worth acquiring at all, urging us to consider the long-term implications of our choices over fleeting desires.
In practice
This quote can be used during a financial seminar to discuss smart spending habits.
I have no views as to where it will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won't do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money and there will be a lot - and it's a lot - it's a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that.
If the world couldn't see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world's greatest investor but in reality have the world's worst record? Or be thought of as the world's worst investor when you were actually the best?
Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.
I think you should read everything you can. In my case, by the age of 10, I'd read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice. _x000D_ You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense.
The most common cause of low prices is pessimism - some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.
One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out and get it over. Your problem won’t improve with age.
People ask me why it is that when I portray the 'angry young man' on screen, I really look angry. They reason that it is due to some suppression in my childhood. But, it's just that I can't help it; it's in my genes.
Ideas come from the Earth. They come from every human experience that you’ve either witnessed or have heard about, translated into your brain in your own sense of dialogue, in your own language form. Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Ideas are probably in the air, like little tiny items of ozone.
Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.
What is the source of all this trouble? I'm saying that the source is basically in thought. Many people would think that such a statement is crazy, because thought is the one thing we have with which to solve our problems. That's part of our tradition.
To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.
I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow.
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