Inspirational Quotes

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Learn to politely say no to lawyers when you disagree with them, unless you want them to run you and your business 😃

Much ❤️,

Dean Agnostic

 
Incentives

"From all business, my favorite case on incentives is Federal Express. The heart and soul of their system, which creates the integrity of the product is having all their airplanes come to one place in the middle of the night and shift all the packages from plane to plane. If there are delays, the whole operation can't deliver a product full of integrity to Federal Express Customers. And it was always screwed up. They could never get it done on time. They tried everything-moral suasion, threats, you name it, and nothing worked.

Finally, somebody got the idea to pay all these people not so much an hour, but so much a shift - and when it's all done, they can go home. Well, their problems cleared up overnight." 

- Charlie Munger

 
McDonald's

"This is a nice college, but the really great educator is McDonald's..........I think a lot of what goes on there is better than Harvard."

- Charlie Munger

 
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him the ability to use cash and you feed him forever." - The Sage of Guam

 
Waiting

"You have to be very patient, you have to wait until something comes along, which, at the price you're paying, is easy. That's contrary to human nature, just to sit there all day long doing nothing, waiting. It's easy for us, we have a lot of other things to do. But for an ordinary person, can you imagine just sitting for five years doing nothing? You don't feel active, you don't feel useful, so you do something stupid." - Charlie Munger

 
"Have the courage of your knowledge and engineering experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgement is sound, act on it even though others  may hesitate or differ." - Warren Buffett 

 
Words of Warning- Some Language that set off warning bells according to Warren:

  • Offshore
  • the opportunity of a lifetime
  • prime bank
  • this baby's gonna move
  • guaranteed
  • you need to hurry
  • It's a sure thing
  • our proprietary computer model
  • options strategy
  • it's a no brainer
  • you can't afford not to own it
  • exclusive
  • you should focus on performance and not fees
  • Don't you want to be rich?
  • can't lose
  • the upside is huge
  • there's no downside
  • I'm putting my mother in it
  • Trust me
  • commodities trading
  • active asset-allocation
 
Reporter: "Could you comment on the state of Financial Literacy?"

W. Buffett: "I think there's a problem with the current generation. Financial literacy is a tough sell in a world of credit cards and calculators and people do silly things. On my honeymoon in 1952, My wife and I stopped at the Flamingo in Las Vegas and saw well-dressed people who traveled thousands of miles to do something very dumb. 'That tells you' it's a world of opportunity.....Let's take, for example, a high cost credit card (for example: 18% to 30%+ interest). I tell students that paying 18% to 30%+ interest for money is probably a fatal idea." 

 
Reporter:  What's your opinion of gold as an investment or Cryptocurrency as an investment?

W. Buffett: We're not enthused about gold or crytocurrency. People say it's a hedge against inflation, but that's also true of land, having an engineering degree, etc. I'd much prefer to own land in Florida, an apartment house, or graduate with an engineering degree as a store of value. We'd rather own an asset that will be useful even if the currency drops to 10 cents on the dollar. People will always need engineers...

 
Mr. Buffet's opinion on PE- Engineering Economics (intrinsic value) 

"In the NCEES specs states 'some problems may require knowledge of engineering economics'......they are probably right and, what counts, however, is intrinsic value - the figure indicating what all of our constituent businesses are rationally worth. With perfect foresight, this number can be calculated by taking all future cast flows of a business in and out and discounting them at prevailing interest rates. So valued, all businesses, from manufacturers of buggy whips to operators of cellphones, become economic equals." - W. Buffett

 
"In my life there are not that many questions I can't properly deal with using my $40 adding machine and dog-eared compounding interest table." Charlie Munger

 
"Hard work and perseverance are no substitutes for actual ability."

"If at first you don't succeed, well then you are a failure."

"If you have to struggle to achieve, you are not an achiever, you are a struggler."

"It is better to be Al Bundy than Ted Bundy."

 
“Unless all the favors on your side, the ability to say no- is an advantage to the intelligent investor.” 

-Warren Buffett

 
3 steps to survive in Construction and Engineering Industry:

1. You “get the Job”.

2. Get the “Job done”.

3. Get the paycheck. (The hardest step)

-Kiwi, the sage of NZ and Australia 

 
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