Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Warren Buffett Quote

Warren Buffett once quoted this:

'Would you prefer to be the greatest lover in the world and known as the worst, or would you prefer to be the worst lover and known as the greatest?' And he said, 'If you know how to answer that correctly, then you have the right internal yardstick.'

Can anyone care to explain to me what does he mean? What is the real meaning when he mention that question.

Anyone?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

well..i tried to figure out the meaning of this.. and to my view you are getting somewhere to the 2nd category kind of person..

These is the part of the interview between the 2 investors who had lunch with warren buffet:

Pabrai: I think there were so many, but I think some of the things that come to mind are, we had a discussion about internal yardsticks. And we had this discussion about truth, and honesty, integrity. And just how Mr. Buffett approached it. And he talked about how he and Mr. Munger use an internal yardstick. And he used a very funny example. He said, 'Would you prefer to be the greatest lover in the world and known as the worst, or would you prefer to be the worst lover and known as the greatest?' And he said, 'If you know how to answer that correctly, then you have the right internal yardstick.' And I think to me that was one of the big takeaways.

Becky: Guy, what was your biggest takeaway?

Spier: Just expanding on that a little, it's a very interesting person who can walk around, imagine that the world, the feedback that they're getting is that they're awful at what they do, but deep down they know that what they're doing is right. And the conversation went into the kinds of people who can do that for not just a few weeks at a time, but who can be doing that for years at a time. But something that's just coming to me right now, and very genuinely from the heart, we talked about how Cecil Williams (of the Glide Foundation) does what he loves to do, taking care of people at Glide, and Warren Buffett does what he loves to do. And he genuinely knows that he and Cecil Williams are equally happy. And it's so important to be doing what you genuinely love doing, which came across in spades.

full text: www.cnbc.com/id/25376299