Having a large amount of leverage is like driving a car with a dagger on the steering wheel pointed at your heart. If you do that, you will be a better driver. There will be fewer accidents but when they happen, they will be fatal.
Interpretation
Leverage can enhance performance but also increases risk significantly.
Warren Buffett's quote highlights the dual nature of leverage: it can amplify success and efficiency in driving results, akin to the precision required when navigating with a dagger at stake. However, this heightened effectiveness comes with dangers; if failure occurs, the consequences can be severe, emphasizing the need for caution when employing leverage in any endeavor.
In practice
In a business meeting about investment strategies.
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.
A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others.
The greatest enemy of good thinking is busyness.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.
Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.
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