Warren Buffett on economics

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Alexander Hamilton1757–1804Letter to Robert Morris (30 April 1781)

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Milton Friedman1912–2006Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15

• Business
• Freedom

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages.

Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter II, p. 19.In context