Max

“In five years, $1,000 became more than $1,600. In ten years, it became almost $2,600. In twenty-five years, it became more than $10,800. The way that numbers exploded as they grew at a constant rate over time was how a small sum could turn into a fortune. He could picture the numbers compounding as vividly as the way a snowball grew when he rolled it across the lawn. Warren began to think about time in a different way. Compounding married the present to the future. If a dollar today was going to be worth ten some years from now, then in his mind the two were the same.”
― Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

“There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures.”
― Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

“The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine,” Buffett said. “So if you had your choice, if you could put a hundred million dollars into a business that earns twenty percent on that capital—twenty million—ideally, it would be able to earn twenty percent on a hundred twenty million the following year and on a hundred forty-four million the following year and so on. You could keep redeploying capital at [those] same returns over time. But there are very, very, very few businesses like that...we can move that money around from those businesses to buy more businesses.”
― Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

“I feel like I’m on my back, and there’s the Sistine Chapel, and I’m painting away. I like it when people say, ‘Gee, that’s a pretty good-looking painting.’ But it’s my painting, and when somebody says, ‘Why don’t you use more red instead of blue?’ Good-bye. It’s my painting. And I don’t care what they sell it for. The painting itself will never be finished. That’s one of the great things about it.”
― Alice Schroeder, The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life