Business Quality Quotes

Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

The idea of excessive diversification is madness. Wide diversification, which necessarily includes investment in mediocre businesses, only guarantees ordinary results.

If you know how to value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into #30 or #35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness.

The number one idea is to view a stock as an ownership of the business and to judge the staying quality of the business in terms of its competitive advantage. Look for more value in terms of discounted future cash-flow than you are paying for. Move only when you have an advantage.

A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.

See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.

When you're out of quality, you're out of business.

Most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies' performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time.

There is never a bad time to start a business - unless you want to start a mediocre one.

If you can make peoples lives a lot better, you've got a really good business.

I would never diminish the quality of Hermes. Hermes can be an even rarer and greater quality business, if they ever wanted to work with us.

I always say that in investing you want to buy stock in a company that has a business that's so good that an idiot can run it, because sooner or later one will. We have a country like that.

Quality for me is key, and this stands true in every facet of my business from real estate, hotels, and fashion.

I want to build businesses that are high quality, socially conscious, and for the people.

I’d say that Berkshire Hathaway’s system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is. We’ve really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who’ve made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.

The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. The quality of your business is no different.

Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business.

Our goal is to find an outstanding business at a sensible price, not a mediocre business at a bargain price.

If you've got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you've got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by a tenth of a cent, then you've got a terrible business. I've been in both, and I know the difference.

In a very real sense, there are only two roles in organisations: customers and suppliers. Everybody functions simultaneously in both roles, whether inside or outside the organisation the essence of good business, therefore, is the quality of the relationship between customer and supplier.