Peter Kaufman Quotes

St. Peter:  “Who is knocking at my gate?” Voice: “It is I.” St. Peter: “Go away, we don’t need any more school teachers here!

I wanted to get rich so I could be independent, like Lord John Maynard Keynes.' Independence is the end that wealth serves for Charlie, not the other way around.

Munger, like Buffett, believes a successful investment career boils down to only a handful of decisions. So when Charlie likes a business, he makes a very large bet and typically holds the position for a long period.

When you do as everyone else does, don’t be surprised when you get what everyone else gets.” — Peter Kaufman

However, all man's desired geometric progressions, if a high rate of growth is chosen, at last come to grief on a finite earth.

modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

[It's] a funny business because on a net basis, the whole investment management business together gives no value added to all buyers combined. That's the way it has to work.

When I was younger, the major accounting firms were quite ethical places, and nobody got filthy rich. But in the space of twenty-five years, they sold out to terrible behavior, one little step at a time.

You'll better understand the evil of top audit firms starting to sell fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top twenty clients, so no one would notice.

Creative accounting is an absolute curse to a civilization. One could argue that double-entry bookkeeping was one of history's great advances. Using accounting for fraud and folly is a disgrace.

capitalism without failure is like religion without hell.

It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.

I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge

There is no better teacher than history in determining the future.... There are answers worth billions of dollars in a $30 history book.

Just avoid things like AIDS situations, racing trains to the crossing, and doing cocaine.

Envy is a really stupid sin because it's the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There's a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time-none, zero.

don't believe that psychology professors in America are people whose alternative career paths were in the toughest part of physics. And that may be one of the reasons why they don't get it quite right.

In the last analysis, every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.