Guy Spier Quotes

Over the time that I followed Warren Buffett, one CFO told me, it's very important to pay attention not only to what Warren Buffett says and what he actually does - often there are subtle differences between the two.

When Warren Buffett says the sun shines out of somebody's backside, it's worth paying attention.

But I think it's important to discuss just how easy it is for any of us to get caught up in things that might seem unthinkable - to get sucked into the wrong environment and make moral compromises that can tarnish us terribly. We like to think that we change our environment, but the truth is that it changes us. So we have to be extraordinarily careful to choose the right environment - to work with, and even socialize with, the right people. Ideally, we should stick close to people who are better than us so that we can become more like them.

I'm trying to manage myself, not just my portfolio.

As I've come to discover, investing is about much more than money. So as your wealth grows, I hope you will also come to realize that the money is largely irrelevant. And what you will want to do with the bulk of your wealth is give it back to society.

From time to time, you have seminal personalities who really change the way the world sees itself - people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Warren Buffett is that kind of person in the business world.

I learned to see myself and my role as a capitalist ... as somebody who's trying to harness, for myself and for society, the power of greed and the power of the will to acquire into something that makes the world a better place. That's the version of capitalism that we want.

so often, we focus our analytical efforts in the wrong direction and miss something vital. So it's crucial to be open to the possibility that we might be mistaken. During

Warren Buffett has shown you can be very, very successful without being rapacious, while still being honest, without engaging in constant legal battles.

This became my own goal: not to be Warren Buffett, but to become a more authentic version of myself. As he had taught me, the path to true success is through authenticity.

Buffett and Munger joke that envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that isn't any fun. "Envy is crazy," remarks Munger. "It's 100 percent destructive. . . . If you get those things out of your life early, life works a lot better.

People will always stop you doing the right thing if it's unconventional.

I do not use short selling. The fund has not shorted a stock since the 2002 to 2003 time frame. At that time I did short three stocks, on which I broke even on two and made money on one of them. The experience taught me that I was not going to be using short selling going forward for a slew of reasons.

Books are a priceless source of wisdom. But people are the ultimate teachers, and there may be lessons that we can only learn from observing them or being in their presence.

The trend of the market is up, not down. Shorting stocks puts you against that trend and thus makes it more difficult to make money.

We think we control our environment, but in fact, it's our environment that controls us. We can't change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring.

our environment is much stronger than our intellect. Remarkably few investors - either amateur or professional - truly understand this critical point.

For most people, attaining the intellectual clarity and emotional detachment that investing requires is tough.

The entire pursuit of value investing requires you to see where the crowd is wrong so that you can profit from their misperceptions.