Part of the goal of the blog is to take that image and put it out into the world — to try to describe it, piece by piece. In part this gives me a better understanding of how I see the world myself, and I want others to see that too. Not necessarily to convince them of my wise ways, but more so in an attempt to create a shared language with people I might meet.

Each post can be thought of as a node in the network, but what I’m realizing is that the nodes are not as well-defined as I thought. They are much more entangled, like a crappy ball of yarn. Attempting to pull on a single thread and write about it brings the whole ball of yarn with it. Each node, it feels, paradoxically, is upstream of each other1.

When it comes time for me to write about whatever topic of interest, I have trouble defining the edges, untangling the threads. For every essay I publish on here about eight are started. I mix metaphors constantly. I reference things that my audience has no context for. I do a bad job of pointing toward the load-bearing pillars of my own mind. Each draft seems to step on other drafts. And with no true sense on how to start to untangle them, I end up contributing to further entanglement.

My goal is to focus on one thing at a time. I want to keep it high-level, un-sequential, so that any one can read any post and have takeaways from it. But in pursuit of that goal, I, instead, feel left with a final version that barely scratches the surface of what I’m hoping to convey. Some of this is just a general skill issue, I am simply not a good enough writer yet. But the immensity of the task is not lost on me either, how does one effectively download their brain to others.

If we think of the brain as a Large Language Model, such as GPT, I’ve consumed years and years worth of training information — life experiences, schooling, books, etc. — that combine to shape the embeddings of who I am2. When prompted in a certain way, a certain output can be expected. It’s not perfect, but there are certain characteristics and latent information present in the system that define who I am. Infinite tiles forming a single mosaic.

If someone asks me what I think about learning — a very open-ended prompt — a million thoughts may flash through my brain in a second. This prompt, one that I think would require mountains and mountains of nuance and discussion, may return, at its peak, my answer of “Given enough time and effort, anyone can learn anything.” This seems way too straight-forward even to me. So when it comes time to explain that answer(and how I arrived at it) to others, I don’t know how to illustrate that long story of my experiences that have led me to that answer. It’s difficult to point to a single part of the image that will properly explain the entire picture. So, instead, I sort of gesture haphazardly at it.

It’s interesting, part of me thinks that I just need to keep writing and publishing, and eventually all of the pieces will magically fit together. But I get hyper-focused on making sure the image that I’m creating for myself here matches the one in my head.

I’ve always had some fear of being perceived in a way I wouldn’t want, which probably contributes to my constant re-writing. I wouldn’t judge an entire book based on a single page, and I worry that someone might attempt that with a single entry here. I don’t want someone to think I have some immovable opinion on a topic. There are fundamental things I strongly believe in, but the form they take on downstream — how they might present themselves in the real world — can be a bit different depending on the context. One of the fundamental things I believe in is the ability to shift my thoughts and opinions over time.

Writing feels much more final. I don’t have the ability to sit there while people read these things and clarify each ambiguous or vague sentence. Once I hit publish, for the most part, I lose my ability to control how people interpret things. The stakes feel much higher, and I want to represent myself properly. But at some point I have to release the final version.

Stanley Kubrick attributed a quote to T.S. Eliot that I think helps illustrate the proper mindset, “I meant what it said. If I could have said it any differently, I would have.”3

In any medium of art, the artist never has as much ability to control people’s interpretation as they might wish. And I think that is something so fundamental to what makes art art. An artist handholding each individual through any of their work — film, music, photography — damages the individual’s ability to truly experience it, to see it through their own eyes, to ultimately find meaning in it. You would be putting your thumb on the scale, creating a dishonest measurement.

Exact knowledge of how anyone thinks or means, absolutely, is next to impossible. We can never know for sure. We only can guess to the best of our knowledge. I want each blog post I make here to serve as an answer to people’s guesses. Answers in the form of “Hotter” or “Colder”. And over time — if I write enough — people will hopefully dial in their guesses enough to have a decent idea of who I am in their heads. At least I can hope.

Without further ado:

On the Shortness of Life by Seneca

• In my slow foray into Stoicism this has been the material I’ve liked the most. I find comfort in the knowledge that people a few thousand years ago were dealing with similar issues. And this reads like it could have been written this year.

Obituary For A Quiet Life by Jeremy B. Jones

• a short obituary that I think helps capture the essence of a life. Beautifully written.

The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson by Robert Caro

• I just wrote about this. I promise this will be the last you hear from me on these books for some time(Little do people know I just got The Power Broker).

Alchemy by Rory Sutherland

• Awesome book that I think most people would enjoy, but I think it should be required reading for many in analytics. Sutherland tells of the cautionary tales of over-optimizing by those who don’t understand what makes something special. There’s a lot of nuance in that, yet I think he’s on to something in discussing people’s desire to be so “logical” with everything.

The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today by Alex Telford

• These are the types of insider-written articles I go crazy over. A wealth of knowledge dispersed over 30 or so pages. I wasn’t even necessarily interested in pharmaceutical development prior to reading this, this might’ve changed things.

Rest of the Books

I originally thought 2024 was a bit of a slower year for books for me. Upon further reflection, the difference wasn’t as great as I thought. Excluding my nostalgia-driven re-reading of some Young Adult fiction last year, the total reading consumption is similar enough.

This year, more than any year I’ve had so far, had a much lower completion rate. I’m unsure exactly how many books I started, got well into, but did not finish. There was one particular book I was reading that I quit with 50 pages to go when I realized I didn’t care how it ended.

To appear below the book has to be good enough to finish, so there is some inherent recommendation present in that. In all, 23 books and about 8900 pages was the final number for books that were finished.

I’m looking forward to reading in 2025 quite a bit. My hope is to tackle at least a few more pieces of classic literature, but we shall see.

Here’s the books I read 2024 in chronological order of when they were finished:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

• A friend of mine told me it was the best book he ever read. While I wouldn’t put it in that hallowed territory, it was still enjoyable(If a book that contains this type of content can be labelled as “enjoyable”).

Prisoner’s Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb by William Poundstone

• By the end of this I found myself skimming most of the chapters on game theory and reading just the chapters that focused on Von Neumann.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

• I like Hemingway, but I’m not sure what I think of this one.

Master of the Senate by Robert Caro

• Magisterial. 1000+ pages on the Senate and Johnson’s ability to bend it to his will. Caro’s level of detail and ability to convey senate procedure is incredible.

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

• Weirdly I liked this book a lot as I was reading it, but as time has gone on I’m not really sure how much I actually do like it. Which is sort of the opposite of how I feel about The Sun Also Rises

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

• This took me a few attempts to get through. Something about Cormac McCarthy where I’m not super blown away while I’m reading his books, but they really stick with me afterwards.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• I have a strong appreciation for Stoicism and maxims. Advice I heard about this book is to read it as notes to self as opposed to some sort of divine teachings. In terms of the Stoics I’d first recommend On the Shortness of Life by Seneca, which I read this year but which I don’t really count toward this.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

• I liked it. Some of the chapters on whales and the whaling profession were pretty interesting. I had hopes the end of the story would have a bit more of a climax but it was good all the same.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

• A great book about writing and some advice for it. But there’s much more depth to it, in where I think there’s good advice for life. I really liked it.

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin

• good enough, but I was hoping for some more insights into Martin’s approach or work ethic.

The Passage of Power by Robert Caro

• Very good insight into the relationship between Kennedy and Johnson, and how much Johnson was able to get done following Kennedy’s assassination. One slight disappointment was I was hoping it would cover a bit more about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a similar way he covered the 1957 legislation in Master of the Senate. Rumor has it he goes more in depth in the (hopefully) forthcoming fifth volume.

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

• Interesting enough. Didn’t know a whole lot about Mormonism and I do like Krakauer. I think he did his best to be objective in his capturing of Mormonism, though at times I think some of his views shine through.

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

• Not sure I have any takeaways

Obvious Adams by Robert Updegraff

• super quick read but one I really enjoy. I think at times we are too clever for our own good. This book can be a good reminder of that. Keep it simple stupid.

Alchemy by Rory Sutherland

• One of the best reads of the year as stated above.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

• Not really sure if this genre of book that is for me. Entertaining enough to get through, but not much of it sticks with me.

The Sweet Forever by George Pelecanos

• a podcaster I like mentioned this as one of his favorite books. Part of me wonders if I misheard him.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

• Awesome biography. I’ve long had an appreciation for Jobs and Apple so it was nice to learn about them in more detail. One of the better things I read this year.

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

• I don’t really remember much from this book. I feel like I’ve consumed most of its lessons before elsewhere. I would still recommend it to people starting to approach personal finance.

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

• Part of me wants to continue reading this series, part of me already figures it will be a waste of time. I probably need to talk to someone who has read it before.

The Path To Power by Robert Caro

• I finished up the Years of Lyndon B. Johnson with the first book, obviously. Very much enjoyed it. The two things that will stick with me the most:

  • LBJ running to work in Washington

  • The aside on what life was like in rural Texas before the arrival of electricity.

The Chalice of the Gods

• book in the Percy Jackson series. I think I’m probably too old to be reading this.

The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart

• a very heavy story about a WWII prisoner of war. The conditions are unfathomable. I find myself having to remember this happened to countless people, most of who will never have their story told.

Not all projects are created equal. Some are straight-forward, others not so much. A distinction I use for many projects is a light switch versus a sunrise. The former has a very clear, very discrete outcome — the switch is either flipped or it is not, the project has either been completed or not.

The sunrise, however, is a bit more ambiguous. It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment when the sun has finished rising1. Some may classify it as when the sun first pokes over the horizon, others may say when it finally clears the horizon. Regardless of the answer, there is some gray(yellow?) area. The lines are blurred a bit, and it can be hard to know exactly when you’ve done enough to move onto the next thing.

In the world of data and analytics, most projects tend to have unclear finish lines, they’re sunrises. Further confounding the problem is that whoever you’re doing this project for, the all-knowing stakeholder, also has a say in when the project is completed.

In the absence of a clear finding or stoping point, projects in the data world tend to grow and grow and grow. There will almost always be follow-ups: just one more question, just one more suggestion to take a look at, just one more cross-tab.

I think there are two main ways to help mitigate this:

1. Having a better relationship with the stakeholder, so you feel more empowered to steer things. Usually this just means saying no.

2. Showing as much of your work as possible

The first option can be a whole post within itself, and for a whole lot of reasons that I’ll conveniently ignore for now, isn’t always the best option2. Let’s talk about door number two.

Being that most analyses are open-ended, there can be, seemingly, infinite paths to take. Some are quickly exhausted, others might branch into a slew of wild-goose chases, while a number might end up as the focus of future projects. All that to say is, the final product can be a bit of an iceberg — a majority of it below the waterline, out of sight. Most of the work is omitted or buried in an appendix.

Depending on what is above the water line, you might not have a whole lot of takeaways to give the stakeholder. One way I try to think of it is just trying to give them a single insight or data point that they can call upon in the future.

Perception is Reality

It should be assumed that stakeholders will expend as little energy as possible on engaging with it. If you don’t hit them over the head, again and again, with what you did, at the correct time, they will not absorb what you did.

The work will speak for itself, but there’s a lot of stuff the work won’t say. It won’t say you worked over the weekend to meet the deadline, it won’t speak of all the ways you went above and beyond to make sure the job was completed to the best of your ability.

From the stakeholder’s perspective, they need to know that you exhausted as many options as possible before they feel satisfied. They have to see your work. You have to bring them along and say I looked here, I looked there, I did this approach and tried that one. You have to make them feel that you exhausted every option in search for their answer. And you have to tell them again and again, until they can trust that you did everything you could.

In physics — at least in my high school physics class — there were exercises in which we had to plot an objects movement over time3. Objects that ended up in the exact same position, whether or not they ever actually moved, are said to have a change in position(defined as ∆X) of zero. In other words, whether that object never moved or it traveled to the moon and back to the same spot of origin, the equation would resolve to the same answer, ∆X equals 0

And this, after way too much preamble, leads me to the point I’m trying to make about showing your work. If someone gives you a question, and you come back and give them no answer or an ambiguous answer, it will look like you never moved. It will look to them as if ∆X is 0.

And ∆X can’t be zero when it comes to your work.

P.S. Is this just a mechanism of corporate analytics or are there other domains/industries where this sort of dynamic exists? I think the more abstract the job, the more it might hold true.

The video above shows Orson Welles talking about how ignorance, not confidence, was a major factor in the success of Citizen Kane.

Welles, quickly hailed as a virtuoso following the success of the movie, seems to have a different perspective than those who heralded him as a genius1. It wasn’t innate ability or superior work ethic alone that helped him establish himself — though I’m sure Welles had those in his own right. Rather, Welles credits ignorance as the catalyst for his technical breakthroughs.

This video caught my attention a few years ago, and is something I like to revisit from time to time. It’s a helpful reminder of the messiness of reality. Hard-work and talent are important, but there’s often so much more at play.

In some ways I think Welles’s use of ignorance here can be interpreted as acting instinctively — what typically gets referred to as reasoning from first principles. Welles, in all his ignorance, is still acting rationally, doing what he thinks is right. However, the difference is that by remaining ignorant to what people would normally consider possible, he is able to stumble on a technique that others hadn’t considered, one that was received much more favorably.

And that’s the lesson: there’s value in zigging while others zag. It’s necessary in a lot of highly competitive fields. And when the right, novel insight is found, the effects can be astounding.

We can take a lesson from nature about what it means to be ignorant. In Alchemy, Rory Sutherland tells a story of “rogue bees”:

Bees have a way of communicating with one another that let other members of its hive know they’ve found nectar. This in sense gives directions to other bees to find the food source and, ultimately, transport more back to the hive2. However, some rogue bees don’t seem to pay any attention to other members of its hive. Instead they travel off randomly. Evolution would tell us this is inefficient behavior. Why go off in search for other sources of nectar, if there’s one available to you. Yet these rogue bees play an important role, they take risks. They do their own thing, but every once in a while they are sure to find a whole new source for the hive. They are the hive’s R&D unit.3

The expected value of ignorance might be low, but at times it might give us a better chance of moving closer to a global maximum. A better chance at finding a break-through

Ignorance can lead us astray, away from the hive. But that isn’t inherently bad.

It’s Wise to Avoid All Extremes

On the other side of this mindset exists hubris. Don’t use ignorance as justification for dismissing people’s opinions or the hard-won conventional wisdom in a given field. Immediately thinking you know more than those who have dedicated careers, or in some cases, entire lives to a particular field, is foolhardy.

Instead, let ignorance be a tool for you to use whenever trying something new. Being a beginner can be frustrating, but provides you an opportunity to look at things with fresh eyes. Without mental inertia or knowledge of the status quo you’re more likely to question each part of a system. And who knows, sometimes it might be right to question it.

Ignorance — for right or wrong — can help breed confidence and conviction. Perhaps it will get you to try things you never have before. There are countless stories of masters within a field who say that if they knew how hard it would be they never would’ve gotten started in the first place. And sometimes that is all it takes, getting started. We’re all in a constant state of figuring things out, so perhaps there is room for a little more ignorance in the equation. To give us confidence in leaving the rest of the hive behind, to where the possibilities are endless.

One for the Road

Guy Clark’s song The Cape has its own take on ignorance. “He did not know he could not fly, so he did”

For the last year and a half I’ve annoyed many people in my personal life by talking about these Lyndon Johnson books…and rightfully so, collectively they are the best books I’ve ever read.

For the uninitiated, there exists a series of four Lyndon B. Johnson biographies by Robert Caro known as The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson. Caro has dedicated the latter half of his life to these volumes — a whopping 4 books in 40+ years.

Upon hearing about these books — from its many disciples — I was equally doubtful. How good can they be? How can there be 2000+ pages on a single person?

The initial selling point for me was Caro and his dedication, not Johnson. The dedication was something I respected. If someone could spend so much time on one topic, there must be something within it worthwhile. I figured I’d read one, or part of one, to get a flavor for it then move onto something different.

And I’ll admit it took some time to really get into it. I started with Means of Ascent and for the first 100-150 pages I wasn’t very impressed. Sure it was well written, and well researched but I didn’t really get the hype. It wasn’t until the introduction of Coke Stevenson did I really start to see why these books have the following they do. I was hooked.

And the obsession didn’t stop until I closed the final page.

You would think after the first 2000 pages there would cease to be anything new to learn, cease to be any insights. Yet there are. The amount of information packed into these books is staggering; but as you read more and more, you start to understand the full picture of the man, Lyndon B. Johnson, and the time he lived in.

Simplicity is one of the main ethos, if not the ethos, of Steve Jobs and Apple. To them simplicity was a target worth aiming for. The simplicity in their products was hard-fought, wrenched from the hands of complexity. And only after an having an intimate knowledge of every detail, every nook-and-cranny within the technology, could they begin to create a product of immense simplicity. A simplicity, that stands upon a web of complexity so deep, we couldn’t even begin to unwind. One that is felt, whether consciously or not, when interacting with an Apple product. When using their products, you know you are in good hands.

That’s how it feels to read a biography from Robert Caro. You know you are in good hands.

Below are all my notes and highlights. that I took during my voyage through The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson. However, no summary or excerpt will do it justice. The real value in these books is realized by reading them, by turning every page1.

N.B. Most of these notes are pulled verbatim from the text. There may be some added commentary here and there, but largely this is from Caro

The Path To Power

• He was also surprised by Johnson’s reason for hesitating. It would kill me politically — what ‘politically’ was Johnson talked about? Until that week at the Greenbrier, Brown had thought he had measured Johnson’s political ambition — had measured it easily, he thought, for Johnson talked so incessantly about what he wanted out of politics. He was always saying that he wanted to stay in Congress until a Senate seat opened up, and then run for the Senate. Well, his congressional district was absolutely safe; being an oil man couldn’t hurt him there. And when he ran for the Senate, he would be running in Texas, and being an oil man wouldn’t hurt him in Texas. For what office, then would Johnson be ‘killed’ by being an ‘oil man’? Only when he asked himself that question, George Brown recalls, did he finally realize, after three years of intimate association with Lyndon Johnson, what Johnson really wanted. And only when, at the end of that week, Johnson firmly refused Marsh’s offer did Brown realize how much Johnson wanted it

• if we children went to the spring to get a bucket of water, we watched all the time to see if an Indian came out of the bush or from behind a tree. We lived in constant dread and fear…If the dogs barked we thought of Indians at once…My mother said she had suffered a thousand deaths at that place” One night, she recalled, her father saw a light in a nearby valley and, leaving her mother, her brother and her alone, went to investigate. He didn’t come back for a long time, and then the three of them heard the footsteps of several men approaching — and 60 years later, she still remembered how they waited to see who would open the door, and what their fate would be. Fortunately, it was her father with some white men who had been camped in the valley, but 60 years later she could still remember ‘ the agonizing fear we had’. And she adds a poignant note: “why men would take their families out in such danger, I can’t understand”

• A little noted but obvious fact of the Texas frontier was that some men lived and some families prospered on the edge of Comancheria, while many others failed. And chance was not the major determining factor. Eternal vigilance, eternal hardness, was the price of success

• And then, after struggling to make a few more token payments on the 10,000$ debt, they could make no more — and they lost the mill anyway. They had been building an empire; a single disastrous year, and it was gone

• In Johnson City, a small town 14 miles down the Pedernales that had been named for its founder, Sam’s cousin James Polk Johnson

• “If men loved Texas, women, even the Anglo pioneer women, hated it” Fehrenback has written. “… In diaries and letters a thousand separate farm wives left a record of fear that this country would drive them mad.” Not only brutally hard work, but loneliness — what Walter Prescott Webb, who grew up on a farm and could barely restrain his bitterness toward historians who glamorize farm life, calls “nauseating loneliness” — was the lot of a Hill country farm wife.

• “Sam Johnson”, he said, “is too smart to work, and not smart enough to make a living without working”

• “The more someone disliked him, the harder he’d try to be his friend” — try by fawning, by smiling, by wheedling, by hugging, by abasing himself, by doing whatever he had to do until he succeeded? What was the reason that he didn’t only want his way with people, adults as well as children, not only his friends but their mothers too, but had to have his way? Was it because of the depth of his shame, because, as Wilma Fawcett speculates, “he was embarrassed because of his father”

• The most striking characteristic of both his parents were that they were idealists who stuck to their ideals. They had been trying ever since he was a little boy to teach him that what mattered was principle, and sticking to principle. Lyndon Johnson’s college career — and his career after college, from beginning to end — would demonstrate what he thought of their teachings

• Johnson had discovered the chink in Evans’ wall. The chink was politics…Opportunities to talk about this subject he loved had been limited on a campus which even state affairs seemed remote, and on which no one possessed a level of sophistication that made talking interesting, but Evans found he enjoyed talking to this tall, skinny boy with the rake, this boy who knew so many legislators, so many stories about legislators, so many stories about the Governor, who had visited his home, so many behind-the-scenes stories about Austin. And if the young man somewhat exaggerated his involvement in state politics, he nonetheless was always exceedingly deferential, in fact.

• In Johnson City, Lyndon Johnson had courted Kitty Clyde Ross, the daughter of the richest man in town. In San Marcos, the richest man was A.L. Davis. Lyndon Johnson began courting Davis’ daughter

• Demanding though he was, moreover, he was demanding in a way that made his students like him. “He put us to work”, says Manuel Sanchez. “But he was the kind of teacher you wanted to work for. You felt an obligation to him and to yourself to do work” The children he spanked “still liked him”. He displayed toward these children feelings he had never displayed before. Their attendance at school was not regular, and if Johnson sometimes seemed to regard their absences as personal insults to him.

• Perhaps the best indication of how Lyndon Johnson felt about the nine months — September 1928 through May 1929 — that he spent in Cotulla comes from his wife, who saw it mostly through his eyes when, years later, he told her about the experience. “That was a little dried up town” Lady Bird Johnson says. “It was just a dying little town”. And then — in words that startled an interviewer who, during long hours of previous conversation with Mrs. Johnson, had become convinced that nothing, no provocation, no matter how strong, would draw from her diplomatic lips so much as a single word even faintly derogatory about anyone or anything — she says” “That was one of the crummiest little towns in Texas”

• Class Presidents, Student Council members, Gaillardians, Star and Pedagog editors — when Lyndon Johnson had returned from Cotulla in June, 1929, all had been members of a clique the scorned Lyndon Johnson. By the time he graduated in August, 1930, all had been replaced by members of a clique he led, in fact if not in name, by Lyndon Johnson. His enemies had been supplanted by his allies, and with remarkable speed. In little more than a year, he, a young man with long-standing interest in politics but absolutely no political experience, had manipulated a campus political structure — created a campus political structure — so that he, still one of the most disliked students on campus, exerted over it more influence than any other student

• The son of the man of whom “you always knew where he stood” let no one know where he stood. Men like Kyle and Puls, into whose ambitions he was scheming to plunge a knife, thought he was their friend until the knife was in up to the hilt. These tactics had, of course, been employed within the confines of campus politics so small-scale and insignificant compared to the politics of the outside world. Within those confines, nonetheless, had emerged a certain pattern to the tactics — the politicking — of Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps the most significant aspect of the pattern was its lack of any discernible limits. Pragmatism had shaded into the morality of the ballot box, a morality in which nothing matters but victory and any maneuver that leads to a victory is justified — into a morality that is amorality

• In general, his students didn’t resent the shouting or the insistence on perfection. One of them — William Goode, later a renowned sociologist — says this was partly because of the insistence: “He’s throwing his whole self into improving you.” Partly it was because the students could see that he was working himself as hard as he was working them. When they handed in written assignments, the assignments were handed back the following day, always. And they were handed back with their margins filled with comments

• “His attitude was, all the minor details must be taken care of, everything must be taken care of, and of course we must win. But the thing was: if you took care of all the minor details, you would win. If you stayed up late, if you did just absolutely everything you could do—well, from it would grow everything. The world’s going to open. God, he made you believe, man — you weren’t just [debaters]

• He was constantly talking politics. A fellow teacher remembers sitting around after debating practice, “drinking Cokes…with a group of Sam Houston High kids, and you [Johnson] analyzed the political technique of Joe Bailey for us; and we argued about Jim Ferguson…and you said, “When I go into politics I am going to use these fellows’ effective methods and avoid their mistakes — I’m learning from them” Talking politics — and thinking politics. He was constantly referring to Battle for Peace, a collection of the speeches of Pat Neff. Some years later, he would give Neff’s book to L.E. Jones, and jones found the margins filled with Johnson’s handwriting: he had not only read the speeches of one of his state’s greatest speech-makers, but had analyzed them — and decided how they could have been improved.

• And as Lyndon Johnson came up Capital Hill in the morning, he would be running

• In December, 1929, he had said, “Conditions are fundamentally sound.” In March 1930, he said the worst would be over in 60 days; in May, he predicted that the economy would be back to normal in Autumn; in June, in the midst of still another market plunge, he told a delegation which called at the White Hous to plead for a public works project, “Gentlemen, you have come 60 days too late. The Depression is over” In his December 2, 1930, message to Congress, he said that “the fundamental strength of the economy is unimpaired.” Asked why, then, so many unemployed men were selling apples on street corners, he said: “Many people have left their jobs for the more profitable ones of selling apples.” His secretary noted that the President was beginning to regard some criticism as “unpatriotic.” In 1932, his tune had not changed; in April of that year, a visitor was authorized to report that “Conditions are getting better.”

• Four years before, he had carried 40 of the 48 states; in 1932, he carried 6.

• The respect for institutions and public authority that holds societies together was beginning to vanish

• An entire nation was going up in flames, and its government seemed paralyzed; as James McGregor Burns has written: “Crisis was in the air — but it was a strange, numbing crisis, striking suddenly in a Western city and then in the South a thousand miles away. It was worse than an invading army; it was everywhere and nowhere, for it was in the minds of men. It was fear”

• Other Capital Hill aides witnessed similar scenes. Not only, they came to realize, did Lyndon Johnson know powerful officials who were in a position to help him, these officials knew him, knew him and liked him - and wanted to help him. A measure of this feeling was the number of patronage jobs Johnson obtained in the AAA and other newly formed New Deal agencies such as the Homeowners Loan Corporation and the Federal Land Bank. Such jobs were generally rationed by the New Deal on the basis of a Congressmen’s importance. The office of the average Congressman might be given four or five, the office of a senior or powerful Congressman perhaps twenty, the office of a committee chairman as many as thirty, or in rare cases, forty. The office of Richard Kleberg, a Congressman with neither seniority nor power, was given fifty.

• Then Wirtz told Johnson whom he needed to see. Johnson made an excuse not to call Frank and the other officials while Wirtz and Ferguson were present; he didn’t want them to witness the shifts to which he would be put to arrange the appointments. When, that night, he telephoned the two Texans at their hotel, he simply told them the appointments had been arranged, as if it had been no trouble at all. And he created the image he had wanted to create. “Johnson called over there, and got us in to see them real quick,” Ferguson recalls. “He helped us a whole lot. Senator Wirtz was very much impressed, and so was I. He knew Washington. He could get you in to any place”

• “I remember hearing Lyndon say that this business of getting these people jobs is really the nucleus of a political organization for the future” Russell Brown says. In his attempts to obtain patronage, he did not — the secretary to an obscure Congressman — have much ammunition to work with. So he could not afford to let any opening slip away. And his work paid off

• It was not a political organization. Its members were far too few to justify that title. It was, however, what Lyndon Johnson said it was: the nucleus of a political organization. Thanks to his skill in distributing the meager resources he possessed, the skill with which he had slected the recipients of his precious jobs, those jobs were held by men bound — by gratitude, by ambition, by love — to a single leader, even though that leader was still only a young congressional aide. They were men he could count on. The road he saw before him — the road to the dim, vast ambition about which he never spoke — was a very long road. Though its general direction — elective office — had become clear, he still couldn’t see its turnings, still didn’t know which of many paths he would follow. But now, as a result of his genius in distributing jobs, he could be sure that, whatever the paths he chose, he would not be without assistance when he trod them. As a far-seeing and determined explorer caches hidden supplies a long a route he knows he will follow in years to come, so that they will be waiting for him when he needs them. Lyndon Johnson had cached along his route the resource indispensable to his plans: men. These men were hidden now, low-level aides in nooks and crannies of large bureaucracies. But they were ready to march at his command; when he needed them, he would be able to call them, and they would come.

• Back on the road again, Johnson would be driving “like a crazy man.” Because of his behavior at the service station, however, Jones and Latimer felt that behind the “craziness” — the frenzied, frantic, almost desperate aggressiveness and haste — lay thorough, painstaking care. And because of the long, intense, silences, they believed that behind the haste lay also the most careful, calculating “thinking, planning”. Those who knew only the public Lyndon Johnson saw the energy and the aggressiveness. Those who knew him best of all, the two youths who for years had not only worked in the same room with him but slept in the same room as him, saw the preparation — the long, intense, silent, secret preparation — behind the energy and aggressiveness. They did not know its details — Johnson let them know, as he let others know, nothing. But they knew it was taking place

• her nickname was given her at the age of two by a nurse because “She’s pretty as a lady bird”

• On the day Sam left, his clothes rolled up and tied with a rope because he had no suitcase, his father hitched up the buggy and drove him to the railroad station. A silent man, he stood there silently until the train arrived and his son was about to board it. Then he suddenly reached out and pressed some bills into his son’s hand. Twenty-five dollars. Sam never forgot that; he talked about that twenty-five dollars for the rest of his life. “God knows how he saved it,” he would say. “He never had any extra money. We earned just enough to live. It broke me up, him handing me that twenty-five dollars. I often wondered what he did without, what sacrifice he and my mother made”. And he never forgot the four words his father said to him as he climbed aboard the train; he was to tell friends that he had remembered them at every criis in his life. Clutching his son’s hand, his father said: “Sam, be a man!”

• Years later, when someone mentioned that Rayburn’s father had not left him much of an inheritance, Rayburn quickly corrected him — his father, he said, “gave me my untarnished name”. He kept it untarnished.

• But when, shortly, after he had obtained his law degree and joined a law firm, one of his partners handed him the largest check he had ever seen as his share of a monthly retainer from the Santa Fe Railroad, he handed it back — and added that he would never ‘accept a dollar of the railroad’s money” To his partner’s request for an explanation, he replied: “I said to him that I was a member of the Legislature, representing the people…” Legislators were routinely presented with free railroad passes; Rayburn returned his, eve though, at the time he refused his pass, he was desperately lonely in Austin and unable to return home because he could not afford the fare. (His mother approved. “We often wish for you to be with us,” she wrote, “but we would rather wait a little longer than for you to accept free passes”).

• His standards were very simple — and not subject to compromise. He talked a lot about ‘honor’ and ‘loyalty, and he meant what he said. “There are no degrees in honorableness” he would say. “You are or you aren’t” Harsh though that rule was, he lived up to it — says one of his fellow legislators: “He had a reputation for honesty and fair dealing. You could always swear by anything Sam told you” — and he insisted that others live up to it, too. “Once you lied to Rayburn, why, you’d worn out your credentials,” an aide says. “You didn’t get a second chance.”

• There was another brief crack —during his acceptance speech. “Up in Fannin County there is an old man already passed his three score, and by his side sits an old woman at whose feet I would delight to worship” he said. “For them also I thank you”

• “I’m not for sale” — and then he would walk away without a backward glance, as he had walked away from a President. His integrity was certified by his bankbook. At his death, at the age of 79, after decades as one of the most powerful men in the United States, a man courted by railroad companies and oil companies, his savings totaled $15,000

• When Silent Cal Coolidge noted that, “You don’t have to explain something you haven’t said,” Rayburn told people that that was “the smartest thing he’d ever heard outside of the Bible”. He took to quoting the remark himself; he talked sometimes about men who “had gotten in trouble from talking too much.” Was he reminding himself what he was doing — and why he had to do it?

• In the evenings, they would pull up easy chairs in a circle in the lobby and talk; Rayburn made it his business to become part of that circle: a respectful, advice-asking, attentively listening part. If he felt he knew as much as they, they never knew. In later years, he would frequently quote a Biblical axiom: “There is a time to fish and a time to mend nets” This was net-mending time for him — and he mended them

  1. LBJ-esque

• Connally agreed, but the White House refused to accept his recommendation. It reacted with amusement to the very thought of entrusting a statewide program to a 26 year old without administrative experience. It announced that the Texas NYA director would be DeWitt Kinard, a former union official from Port Arthur. Kinard was, in fact, formally sworn in to the post.
  
  Sam Rayburn went to the White House. What he said is not known, but the White House announced that a mistake had been made. The NYA director for Texas was not DeWitt Kinard after all, the announcement said. It was Lyndon B. Johnson
  
  The appointment made Johnson the youngest of the 48 state directors of the NYA. He may, in fact, have been the youngest person to be given statewide authority for any major New Deal progra,. Was he pleased? Was his ambition satisfied — even for a moment? When his appointment was announced, other secretaries crowded into his office to congratulate him. What as his response?
  
  ”When I come back to Washington”, he said, “I’m coming back as a Congressman.”

• Feeling against Wirtz was running very high among Guadalupe River farmers who felt they had been cheated by a law sponsored by their own State Senator. On February 26, 1934, Tom Hollamon, Sr., a 67 year old farmer who had once been a Texas Ranger, strode into Wirtz’s office, where he was meeting with Insull representatives, and began shooting; before he could be disarmed, one Chicago financier was dead

• So Lyndon went to see a man who could — the man who was the smartest politician he had ever known… to ask his father’s advice…And Daddy says, “She’s an old woman. She’s too old for a fight. If she knows she’s going to have a fight she won’t run. Announce now — before she announces. If you do, she won’t run

• he estimates the cost of Lyndon Johnson’s first campaign at between 75,000 and 100,000 — a figure that would make the campaign one of the most expensive congressional races in Texas history up to that time

• In Washington, and before that in Houston and Cotulla, he had worked so feverishly, driven himself so furiously, forced his young will to be inflexibile — had whipped himself into the frantic, furious effort that journalists and biographers would call ‘energy’ when it was really desperation and fear. He had tried to do everything —everything — possible to succeed, to earn respct, to ‘be somebody’. “There was a feeling — if you did everything, you would win. The feeling had been reinforced — in Washington and Houston and Cotulla —by experience. In each of those jobs, he had done ‘everything’ — had lashed himself into the effort in which ‘hours made no difference, days made no difference, nights made no difference’ into the effort in which he worked weekday and weekend, day and night. And he *had “*won”, had made the most of each of those slender chances. Now had come the main chance, the real chance, quite possibly the only chance. And the effort that Lyndon Johnson had made before was nothing beside the effort he made now

• Sam Johnson had a favorite saying: “You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.”

• Johnson had been elected with the fewest votes — by far the fewest votes — of any of the nation’s 435 Congressmen

• Shelton didn’t know the full extent of the trouble Johnson was taking to become his friend; Johnson had not, in fact, just parked his car when Shelton came out; he had parked it an hour before, and had been sitting in it for an hour waiting for Shelton to come, to take advantage of the “chance” meeting

• Roosevelt, traveling by special train, reached Washington before Johnson. He telephoned Tommy himself. As Corcoran recalls the President’s words: “He said, ‘I’ve just met the most remarkable young man. Now I like this boy, and you are going to help him with anything you can’”

• Hawthorne said of Andrew Jackson that “his native strength… compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him the sharper tool.” These were very cunning men, and Lyndon Johnson made very sharp tools of them. They didn’t realize this, of course. In fact, they vehemently deny it. They felt that they were using Lyndon Johnson at least as much as he was using them, and this feeling was important to them

• Lyndon Johnson was so energetic and ingenious a Congressman that a knowledgeable observer called him “the best Congressman for a district that ever was”

• To observe the House of Representatives was to observe what absolute, untrammeled, unchallengeable power did to men

• The service ended with a few words from one of Sam’s friends, a rawboned old Texas politician, Railroad Commissioner Lon Smith; the words were taken from Hamlet: “He was a ma, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again

• One of the great dramas of American political history was the blood feud between FDR and his VP John Nance Garner

• No man was more influential in the Senate than Garner”, Joseph Alsop and Turner Catledge wrote in their detailed and invaluable book on the court fight, The 168 Days; “In the President’s first administration large numbers of senators had seen the light on the New Deal measures in [Garner’s] private office with the well-stocked liquor closet… than anywhere else in Washington

• But then came the purge, a cross-country trip on which Roosevelt attempted to defeat in their primaries selected Representatives and Senators who had opposed him. John Garner, to whom party unity was so vital, could hardly believe that a President was doing this to members of his own party; in fact, at the time of the court compromise, he had personally promised Senators — his intimates believe on the basis of a commitment given to him by Roosevelt - that there would be no reprisals from the white house

• Garner, Timmons wrote, “abhorred even the idea of a third term for any President” good or bad. The basis for his abhorrence was simple: four decades in Washington had taught him what power did to men. “No man should exercise great powers too long,” he said. On another occasion, he was to say: “We don’t want any kings or emperors in this country. You have to curb the ambitions of every man, even the best of them, [because] they are human”

• Enraged Republicans, milling in the well of the House, demanded reconsideration; by using, too fast for his opponents to keep up with him, a series of intricate parliamentary procedures — and, finally, when he was cornered, pounding down his gavel to finalize the vote, and grimly defying their leaders to do something about it — he kept the one vote margin. He had stretched House rules to a point at which thy would have broken had no the power of his iron personality stood behind his rulings — “but,” a friend wrote, “the end result was that, when…Japanese bombers struck Pearl Harbor less than four months later, the United States had an Army of 1,600,000 men instead of a token force of 400,000

• Gratitude is an emotion as ephemeral in Washington as elsewhere

• By the 1980s, when Democratic and Republican congressional committees would be large-scale operations that furnished services and money to candidates, it would be difficult to imagine an era in which most Congressmen were to left to fight their campaigns without significant help from their national party, but before Lyndon Johnson, that was, certainly the case of the Democrats and to some extent in the case of Republicans, largely the practice. Discussing what Lyndon Johnson did in the campaign of 1940, James Rowe says flatly, “Nobody had ever done this before”

• Roosevelt told Harold Ickes that Johnson was “the kind of uninhibited young pro he would have liked to have been as a young man” — and might have been “If he hadn’t gone to Harvard”

• Now, thanks to Lyndon Johnson, he had been able to do so — had, in fact, made money on a scale perhaps as big as his dreams. But the appetite grows by what it feeds on, and now his dreams were bigger

• There was another difference between the two campaigns. Johnson was campaigning hard in 1941, was still putting in long days on the campaign trail, but there was a marked drop in his energy level. The desperation, the frantic, driving work was gone. He wasn’t, in fact, even the hardest-working candidate

• People were coming to Pappy’s rallies for entertainment, politicians said; they weren’t coming for politics. The politicians were unable to take seriously a candidate who said his only platform was the Ten Commandments, who hadn’t paid his poll tax, who was only barely a Texan, and who wasn’t even a Southerner — who was, in fact, a carpetbagger from Kansas

• Almost totally ignorant of the mechanics of government, O’Daniel proved unwilling to make even a pretense of learning, passing off the most serious problems with a quip; asked once what taxes he was proposing to keep the deficit-ridden government’s head above water, he replied that ‘no power on earth’ could make him say. Ignoring Democratic party machinery, he tried to appoint to key government posts wither men with absolutely no experience in the areas over which they were to be given authority or reactionaries, including members of the Jeffersonian Democrats, an extremist group that had bitterly opposed Roosevelt’s re-election in 1936. He offered few significant programs in any area, preferring to submit legislation that he knew could not possibly pass, and then blame the Legislature for not passing it

• Lyndon Johnson’s loss had been due to a political fluke. He had been beaten not by his opponent’s friends but by his opponent’s foes; O’Daniel had won the Senate seat not because these men wanted him to be Senator, but because they didn’t want him to be Governor — but because they wanted to get him out of Texas. But it was Johnson’s mistake that had enabled these men to take his victory away. He had planned and schemed and maneuvered for ten years — had worked for ten years, worked day and night, weekday and weekend — had done “everything”. And, for ten years, he had won. He had relaxed for one day. And he had lost.

• So completely had Roosevelt accepted Johnson’s excuse — that he had lost the election only because he had been cheated out of it — that he joked about it, telling him, “Lyndon, apparently you Texans haven’t learned one of the first things we learned up in New York State, and that is that when the election is over, you have to sit on the ballot boxes”

Means of Ascent

• The mistrust of the presidency started with LBJ. Before then people would always have some reverence for the seat

• This book covers the last 7 years he was in house of Reps. 1941-1948

• Finally won the senate. Won the election by 87 votes. There were 1+ million ballots cast

• Lyndon had to feel like he was leading. Even as a kid if he wasn’t pitching in the sandlot he’d take his ball and go home

• LBJ on his touring of the pacific theater was an observer on a bombing run and his plane took heavy fire from Zeros. The plane he was supposed to be on got shot down

• Johnson won the silver star for the one flight he flew on during the war. No one else got it.

• Johnson would lie often about the extent of his service. Greatly exaggerating. He would lie to the point that he believed his own lies. He felt he deserved a higher honor than the silver star

• Lyndon treated Lady Bird like absolute shit. Would try to embarrass her by making her do things for him in public.

• She was a quiet person who read all the time

• Johnson rarely took a stand on anything. He never would give speeches on the floor of the house nor introduce legislation. In private he’d talk a lot but he wouldn’t actually say anything. Liberal people thought him liberal, conservatives as conservative

• It feels like Coke Stevenson and William Dodd would’ve gotten along

• As one businessman puts it: “Everybody knew that a good way to get Lyndon to help you with government contracts was to advertise over his radio station”

• Lyndon Johnson. had worked at politics for years to achieve power; now he was working at politics to make money

• By 1948 Lyndon Johnson began telling his friends that he was a millionaire

• He had assiduously cultivated —and won— the affections of many in the circle that surrounded Franklin Roosevelt

• On the site, below the falls that he had picked out for his home years earlier, he now built it, with his own hands. Several years later it burned down, and he built another house, also with his hands. This one had a wing solely for his books. His self-education had progressed from the practicalities of law to its philosophy and theory, and then to government, to history and to biography. In the Hill Country, where books were so rare — Junction, like Johnson City, had no library; most families owned only one book: the Bible — he had created a substanial library. He would read at night, but also in the mornings, before daylight. He rose very early every morning and put on a pot — a battered old granite-wear pot — of very strong coffee. Then he would sit down with a book. Friends who stayed at the ranch remember sometimes getting up at four or five in the morning to go to the bathroom, and seeing a lamp burning in the living room, and in its circle of light, Coke Stevenson reading, his huge, gnarled, powerful hands tenderly holding the book. “He treats his books like friends,” one man would recall. “None of his books has a turned-down edge” to mark the place; “none has notes on the margin — if notes are needed, he makes them on a piece of paper and inserts them at the place…”

• [Coke] never let a day pass on the ranch that he didn’t do something to improve the ranch

• Coke was playful but intensely dedicated. A visitor says “sometimes [him and his wife] acted like they were still two kids themselves”.

• He once drove his Model T 2 miles down the middle of the river to their house, and yelled like a boy after he successfully did it

• The Constitution of the United States could, of course, in some ways be read as a document that restricted government in the name of individual freedom — Jefferson had been among those who so read it — and that was the way Coke Stevenson read it.

• In some valley precincts, the voters were also handed ballots that had already been marked

• San Antonio’s west side was a bloc that could deliver 25,000 votes to one person

• In 1940, in the seven rural South Texas counties controlled by Parr, O’Daniel had received 95% of the vote; in 1941 O’Daniel received 5% of the vote, there was a scattering of votes for other candidates and Johnson received more than 90 percent of the vote

• Issues, to Johnson, had never been anything more than campaign fodder; caring about none himself, he had, in every campaign he had run, simply tested, and discarded, one issue after another until he found one which, in his word, “touched” — influenced voters. (”we didn’t care if the argument was true or not” recalls one of his college allies. “We just kept trying to find one that touched”).

• John Connally said, “The 1948 Senate Campaign was the beginning of modern politics

• When LBJ was sick in the hospital thinking his journey to office was finally done, “a sort of calmness came over him and a sort of resignation’ he said, ‘Well, I guess I might as well withdraw. Get your notebook.’”

• LBJ’s legal team was making the argument that was more about the stealing doesn’t matter, not that it didn’t happen

• LBJ’s contention was that whether or not Coke had been wronged, the law was powerless to right that wrong. And with that contention, the judge said, he did not agree. “A sound principle of justice is that there must never arise a wrong for which there is not a tribunal wherein there is remedy. That is in fact the spirit of equity that has come down to us through the ages.”

• And as for Coke, he was a different man — or rather, he was the man he had been when he was young, and had driven his car down the middle of the river on a bet. “I’m going to say a word about Mr. Stevenson now that you wouldn’t believe”, Bob Murphey says, “Bubbly. Uncle Coke was just bubbling. He just worshipped her.” Murphey had a wife himself now, and she says, “He never walked in the kitchen that he didn’t grab her and squeeze her and give her a big kiss. They were just so happy with each other!” Other friends, visiting the ranch, would watch Teeney and Coke reading together and talking. “They had the same kind of humor, the same way of looking at thing,” Ernest Boyett says. “That dry way of observing people. They could sit and talk for hours. If that wasn’t happiness, I don’t know what was”

• And when she became a teenager, Coke Stevenson, made for Jane what was, for him, the ultimate sacrifice. Newspapers across Texas chronicled it in amazement: “A telephone has been installed on the Coke Stevenson Ranch.” “Well you know how teenagers are”, drawled Stevenson.

• Tolbert wrote: after spending some time with Coke Stevenson…here by the green, rushing river, I’m wondering if he wasn’t lucky to lose that Senate race by 87 votes.

  1. next line says: Those who knew Coke Stevenson didn’t wonder

• And then, still standing up in the boat. Coke Stevenson threw his arms wide, in a gesture of triumph and joy

Master of the Senate

• Scoop Jackson would say that when JFK, as President, urgently needed a senator’s vote, he would summon him to the Oval Office and ‘explain precisely why the bill was so important and how much he needed the senator’s support.’ If, however, the senator said his constituency would not permit him to give that support, that if he gave Kennedy the vote he needed, the vote might cost him his seat in the Senate, ‘Kennedy would finally say he was sorry they couldn’t agree, but he understood.” Lyndon Johnson, Jackson would say… Lyndon Johnson wouldn’t understand, would refuse to understand. He would “charm you or knock your block off, or bribe you or threaten you, anything to get your vote.” He would do anything he had to, to get that vote, “ad he’d get it. That was the difference.

• Webster’s Second Reply to Hayne

  1. When my eyes shall be turned for the last time on the meridian sun, I hope I may see him shining brightly upon my united, free and happy Country. I hope I shall not live to see his beams falling upon the dispersed fragments of the structure of this once glorious Union. I hope that I may not see the flag of my Country, with its stars separated or obliterated, torn by commotion, smoking with the blood of civil war. I hope I may not see the standard raised of separate State rights, star against star, and stripe against stripe; but that the flag of the Union may keep its star and its stripes corded and bound together in indissoluble ties. I hope I shall not. see written, as its motto, first Liberty, and then Union. I hope I shall see no such delusion and deluded motto on the flag of that Country. I hope to see spread all over it, blazoned in letters of light, and proudly floating over Land and Sea that other sentiment, dear to my hear, “Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable!”

  2. No speech in the English language, perhaps no speech in modern times, had ever been as widely diffused and widely read as Webster’s Second Reply to Hayne, an historian of the period was to write

• The use of the Senate, Madison said, it should be an anchor against popular fluctuations

• Thomas Jefferson was in Paris during the convention. When he returned he asked GW why he had agreed to a 2 house congress. His maybe apocryphal response was “Why did you pour your tea into that saucer?” and when Jefferson said ‘to cool it’. GW said “Just so. We pour house legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it”. The resolution providing a 2 house congress was agreed to by the Constitutional Convention with almost no debate or dissent

• Justice, tho it may be an inconvenient restraint on our power, while we are strong, is the only rampart behind which we can find protection when we become weak. That principle was of course the one that had been so prominent in motivating the Founding Fathers to create a Senate — that the rights of a minority must be protected against the tyranny of the majority

• “It only remains for me to bid you a final adieu” — Jefferson Davis, as he was the first of the southern senators to leave at start of civil war era. 21 of 22 southern senators followed suit in the coming weeks. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was the only dissenter

• Lyman Trumbull of Illinois who hated Andrew Johnson said about the prospect of impeaching him: “The question to be decided is not whether Andrew Johnson is a proper person to fill the Presidential office, nor whether it is fit that he should remain in it… Once set, the example of impeaching a president for what, when the excitement of the hour having subsided, will be regarded as insufficient cause, no future President will be safe… What then becomes of the checks and balances of the Constitution? … I cannot be an instrument to produce such a result”

• Credit Mobilier(scheme in which millions in bribes were distributed by Union Pacific Railroad) came to light in 1872; it was only a harbinger of the scandals to come, of graft and plunder”unequaled before or since in the history of the country” and in these scandals senators were often leading figures. In his novel Democracy, published in 1880, Henry Adams called the United States “a government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of of Senators”

• Seniority would rule the senate. It determined a junior senator’s place at official dinners — far below the salt

• Since chairmen owed their places not to their party’s leader in the Senate or to their national political party but solely to what the political scientist George B. Galloway called ‘The accident of tenure’

• So long as they felt threatened, felt there was a significant danger that a filibuster might be cut off by a cloture vote, and that they therefore might need the support of at least a few moderate senators, the Southeners veiled their arguments in principles palatable to moderates: in the sacredness of the Constitution and the sovereignty of the states. But as soon as they began to feel that they had enough support to win, the veil dropped away in private conversations to reveal what lay beneath

• His clothes were dramatic, too. although he owned blue suits, most of them didn't look like those worn by other senators; so rich and shimmering was their fabric that friends joked about Linden's “ silver suits”, and even with his conservative blue suit, and even when wearing it with a starched white shirt, he often didn't wear one of his many understated Countess Mara neckties, but rather one of the style known in Texas as a “Fat Max” tie: short, very wide, and garishly hand-painted, some with placidly grazing horses, some with bucking Broncos – one favorite had shapely cowgirls astride – the Cuffs of his shirt were fastened by notably large solid gold cufflinks in the shape of Texas, with a diamond in the center to show the location of Austin; his gold watch was so heavy that when he went to a doctor, he was careful to remove it before he stepped on the scale – and it glinted from his waist, where his belt buckle was also large and solid gold. his initials seem to be everywhere: his belt buckle was monogrammed, as were his shirts ( not only on the breast pocket but on at least one cuff) and his pocket handkerchief, and when he wasn't wearing the Texas cufflinks, he was wearing links that proclaimed in solid gold his initials from each rest

• “You couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel”

• He tried to teach his young assistance to read men – “ watch their hands, watch their eyes”, he told them. “ read eyes. no matter what a man is saying to you, it's not as important as what you can read in his eyes” – and to read between the lines: more interested in men's weaknesses than in their strengths because it was weakness that could be exploited, he tried to teach his assistance how to learn a man's weaknesses. “ the most important thing he has to say is what he's trying not to say”. for that reason, he told them, it was important to keep the man talking; the longer he talked, the more likely he was to let slip a hint of that vulnerability he was so anxious to conceal.

• if there was a single mention of the incident in even one of the scores of profiles of Russell that appeared in the newspapers and magazines during the 40s 50s and 60s, the author has been unable to find it

  1. this is about Russell’s handling of some white convict who kept escaping awful conditions and was extradited to Georgia

  2. Also Caro saying he couldn’t find something is as much of a confirmation to knowing something doesn’t exist as you could ever get

• traits sometimes deepen, harden, as a man grows older, no matter how much he may wish them not to

• as important as money was space, always in short supply in the senate office building. It was not unusual for congressional committees to use office in the vast regulatory agency buildings, but under federal regulations rent had to be paid for them. With the vice chairman of an agency on your staff, however, that was a problem easily solved. 6 rooms on the 2nd floor of the SEC building were given rent-free to the subcommittee, and filled with SEC accountants and typists whose salaries were still paid by the agency, but who were actually working for the subcommittee. To deflect objections to all these arrangements from other SEC commissioners, Senator Russell had a quiet word with Senator Maybank, whose appropriations subcommittee oversaw the SEC budget, and the agency’s annual appropriation was increased by some 200k

• By aug 15th, two weeks after the preparedness subcommittee had held its first organization meeting, the subcommittee’s staff numbered 25, 3x as many as the staff of Tyding’s parent committee. Lyndon, still in his 2nd year in the Senate, had assembled a staff not only larger than that of most other senators — perhaps larger than that of any other senator — but more qualified. In just 2 weeks, in that small-scale Senate of 1950, Lyndon had created his own little empire, and it was an empire of talent

• Truman, for example, had written, “the functions of generals and admirals is to fight battles and to tell us what they need to fight battles with” Jonhson’s statement said, “We were not created to tell generals and admirals how to fight battles, but rather to make sure that they and the men fighting under them have what they need to win those battles”

• In 1913 also the Democratic caucus elected an Assistant leader called a ‘whip’, after the ‘whipper-in’ of a British fox hunt who is assigned to keep the hounds from straying, whipping them back into line if necessary

• No detailed analysis of Johnson’s selection as Assistant Democratic Leader — at the age of 42 and after just 2 years in the Senate — is necessary. He had gotten the job for the same reason he had gotten the chairmanship of the Preparedness Subcommittee: because of the support of one man. But he had gotten it.

• the White House admitted that of the first 70,000 letters and telegrams it received, those critical of the General’s recall outnumbered those in favor twenty to one; at that point it stopped counting

• The last words of Mcarthur’s speech were unforgettable words. “The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the Plain at West Point”, he said, and his “boyish hopes and dreams have long since vanished” But he said:
  
  I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day, which proclaimed, most proudly, ‘Old Soldiers never die. They just fade away’. And like the soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away — an old solder who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty
  
  And the last word of all was spoken n a whisper — a whisper into a great hush: “Good-bye”

• The Senator(William White) said, ‘This is new to my experience; I have never feared more for the institutions of my country. I honestly felt back there if the speech had gone on much longer there might have been a march on the White House

• This was one of the moments to which Hugh Sidey was referring when he wrote that ‘when the US got into trouble…Russell would…stick a forefinger into his somber vest and amble down those dim corridors to see if he could help his country

• Few emotions are more ephemeral in the political world than gratitude: appreciation for past favors. far less ephemeral, however, is hope: the hope of future favors. Far less ephemeral is fear, the fear that in the future, favors may be denied. Thanks to Sam Rayburn, LBJ now had, at least to a limited extent, those emotions on his side in dealing with senators; he had something to promise them, something to threaten them with

• Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It may seem hot to you, but it never does to anyone else

• Humphrey worked hard to erase the city’s[Minneapolis] previous reputation as the ‘anti-Semitism capital of America’

• 1948 democratic convention was set in Philly, some meetings took place in Bellevue

• Truman, buffeted by seemingly endless revelations of corruption in his Administration(nine of whose members, including his appointments secretary, would go to prison)

• Truman’s VP Albert Barkley at 74 was considered to old to run in 1952

• As George Reed says, “It’s one thing to know something academically; it’s another to have it hit you in the face

• By far the best book on the Russell-Johnson relationship is a little-known work, Colleagues, by John A. Goldsmith

• Joe McCarthy’s references to ‘Alger—I mean Adlai” and his statement that if he got into the Democrat’s campaign train with a baseball bat, he would ‘teach patriotism to little Ad-lie”, resonated with the electorate

• And the key to his advancement had fit the pattern of his entire life: as he had done at san Marcos and in the House of Representatives, he had identified the one man who had the power that could best help him, had courted that man, had won his support, and through that support, had been given the opportunity to attain the position he sought

• Often, for long minutes, the only words LBJ spoke were words to encourage the man on the other end of the wire to keep talking — so that he could better determine what might bend the man to his purpose, what arguments might work

• Of all the archaic rules and customs and precedents that had made the Senate of the US an obstacles to progress, the seniority system had been the strongest. For decades men had been saying that no one would ever be able to change the seniority system. LBJ had changed it in two weeks

• They would, within the limits of politics, be grateful. And if the coin of political gratitude is a currency subject to rapid devaluation, the political fear that is the coin’s obverse has more stability. Its value might even increase as the implications of what had been done sank in: men who knew who had given, would know also who could refuse to give. Barkley and Lucas and McFarland, like the Leaders before them, had had little to give, and therefore little to refuse

• If it’s true that when you die the things that bothered you most are engraved on your skull, I am sure I’ll have there the mud and dirt of France during the invasion and the name of Senator Bricker

• It had been in Feb 1950 that Wisconsin junior senator(Joe McCarthy) told a woman’s club in Wheeling, WV ‘I have here in my hand a list of 205 State Department employees who have been named as members of the Communist Party…and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State’s Department” words that touched off the decade’s Red Scare

• To traditionalist senators of both parties, moreover, the idea of taking action against a colleague because of his political views are anathema. “At that time, there was a feeling that if people of a state wanted to send an SOB to the Senate, that was their business, “George Reedy was to write. “It is difficult in this pace so devoted to debate, for the Senate to think of disciplining a member for what he says,” William White said.

• That April, McCarthy, speaking on the floor of the Senate, attacked one of Carl Hayden’s faithful retainers, Darrell St. Claire, chief clerk of Hayden’s Rules Committee, charging that in a former job — as a member of the State Department’s Loyalty Board — St. Claire had voted to give security clearance to an economist who was the subject f ‘12 separate FBI reports’

• The number of months that would elapse between the Hayden episode and the Senate’s censure resolution on McCarthy was in fact 32 months — more than 2 and a half years, years during which scores of men and women were destroyed by the Wisconsin’s demagogue’s charges, and hundreds, possibly thousands, more were destroyed by charges brought by local vigilantes emboldened by the national atmosphere of fear and distrust that McCarthy went on creating. During these years, thousands of government workers would be fired under federal loyalty decrees and hundreds of others lost their jobs — in Hollywood, in schools, in colleges, in unions — and were prevented by blacklists from finding others.

• McCarthy biographer David Oshinsky

• Power, Lord Action said, corrupts. Not Always. What power always does is reveal

• A You ain’t learning nothin when you’re talking plaque had been installed on his mantelpiece

• But the most significant aspect of all was that as Johnson talked to Mrs. Stennis, buttering her up, he would, as he poured it on, wink and nod to his listeners, grinning at them over what he was doing. Although his words seemed sincere, he seemed to want his listeners to understand that they really weren’t. It seemed to be important to him that they know that.

• “Under johnson, the Senate functions like a Greek tragedy” Paul Douglas was to say, “”All the action takes place offstage, before the play begins. Nothing is left to open and spontaneous debate, nothing is left for the participants but the enactment of their prescribed roles”

• Lyndon knew that the illusion of power was almost as important as real power itself, that, simply, he more powerful you appeared to be, the more powerful you became. It was one of the reasons for his great success

• As for routine business, in a single day, as Newsweek reported, ‘The senate passed 90 bills, confirmed an ambassador and a Federal Trade commissioner and then knocked off because it had temporarily run out of business. The elapsed time: four hour and 43 minutes. Washington was jolted to attention. The first session of the 84th Congress, Alsop wrote ‘ is certainly the most efficiently run session in recent memory’. In less than 6 months as Majority Leader, the youngest Majority Leader in its history, LBJ had tamed the untamable Senate

• The controller said that Humphrey’s plane was indeed stacked up, in a holding pattern over Pittsburgh; a lot of planes were stacked up in the pattern, the controller said. Johnson stopped shouting. His voice grew quiet and threatening, “Well you better be goddamned sure none of these planes comes in before his comes in” he said

• to this man to whom ‘there are no degrees in honorableness — you are or you aren’t” he had broken his word to him

• Corcoran had come to the ranch bearing the offer of a substantial gift — from a man who had the power to make one: Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. In a meeting in New York, the Ambassador instructed Corcoran to tell Johnson that if he would publicly enter the race for the nomination, and would privately promise that if he won, he would select Jack Kennedy as his running mate, Joe Kennedy would arrange the financing for the ticket. If Johnson was not running, the Ambassador said he would support Stevenson

• Finally Rowe said, ‘Oh goddamn it, all right’ — and then ‘as soon as Lyndon got what he wanted, Rowe was forcibly reminded why he had been determined not to join his staff. The moment the words were out of Rowe’s mouth, Johnson straightened up, and his tone changed instantly from one of pleading to one of cold command. “Just remember, Johnson said, I make the decisions you don’t

• Talking with the author decades later, some of them tried to ensure that their participation in it would be recorded for history. Claude Wild Jr. was discussing another matter when he interrupted himself to say, ‘You know, I was n charge of counting the votes for the natural gas bill’ After a pause he added, ‘You’re not writing that down’. and he waited until the author had made the desired note before continuing

• By thus arranging for the liberals to be ignored rather than answered, he had ensured that their speeches received less attention than would have been the case had their been controversy on the floor. And since many liberals had a natural reluctance to sit at their desks listening to someone else give a long speech, and they had no leader strong enough to ensure that they stayed on the floor anyway, liberals often found themselves speaking to a very small audience indeed. On Jan 25 Paul Douglas took the floor for a long carefully researched speech against the Harris-Fulbright bill. There were only 2 other senators present, the presiding officer and Frank Carlson of Kansas. The presiding officer signaled to Carlson to take the chair, and stepping down from the dais, left the chamber himself. ‘That left Senator Douglas talking to four rows of desks’ in which there was not a single senator present, Frederick Othman wrote. ‘In the press gallery, reporters were busy interviewing each other on the question of whether anybody remembered seeing a senator speaking to nobody at all. Even the oldest correspondent couldn’t remember a time when at least 2 or 3 senators weren’t on the floor

• If an American Negro wanted to register to vote in Bullock County, Alabama during the 50s, he had to register under what the county’s Board of Registars called the ‘voucher system’. He was required to bring with him a ‘supporting witness’ to attest to his character, morals, and general fitness to be a voter. But only Bullock County residents who were already registered voters were eligible to be supporting witnesses, and no witness could vouch for more than 3 person during each 4 year term of the Board. and since, by inviolate bullock county custom, no white person would ever vouch for a Negro, eligible ‘vouchers’ for Bullock County Negroes were in rather short supply. For out of the county’s 11,000 Negro residents, exactly 5 were registered voters

• Mississippi Senator had a 1947 book called Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization, in which he said it was better to see civilization ‘blotted out with the atomic bomb than to see it slowly destroyed in the maelstrom of miscegenation, interbreeding, intermarriage, and mongrelization

• In 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes won the presidency with a razor thin margin provided by the disputed electoral votes of 3 southern states, and as part of the negotiations under which those votes were receive, federal troops were withdrawn from the South, and the vote began to be taken away from the new Negro Citizens — so effectively that by 1889, a prominent southern editor would remark that ‘the negro as a political force’ was no longer a ‘serious consideration’ in the region

• the hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who marched off to the second world war had gone into battle in defense of America’s shining principles, so many of which — all of which, in the last analysis — rested on the declarations that ‘all men were created equal’ and that all men ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’ and that it is to ‘secure these rights’ that ‘Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’ And then these veterans came home, many of which with medals, many of which with wounds, to be reminded not of America’s promises, but of America’s practices

• The court’s chief justice understood as Johnson understood the importance of unanimity, and Earl Warren had obtained it — even from Justice Stanley Reed of border-state Kentucky. Reed, who had been the last holdout, was looking down from the bench at Thurgood Marshall, who had led the fight in Brown, when Warren uttered the words, ‘so say we all’. Reed “was looking me right straight in the face, because he wanted to see my reaction when I realized he hadn’t dissented,” the great black attorney would recall. The two men exchanged nods, barely perceptible. But there were tears on the Justice’s face. All across the United States black men and women knelt to give thanks to God.

• Till trial: in fact, it hadn’t taken that long, jurors were to say later that they had delayed coming back into the courtroom to ‘make it look good’. (The foreman was later asked what he thought of Mrs Bradleys testimony, “if she tried a little harder, she might have got out a tear” he said)

• Before the Till trial, the NAACP had been deeply in debt because of its legal expenses in the Brown trials. Now contributions to its ‘fight fund’, the war chest to help victims of racial attack, soared to record levels

• Sometimes the two forces — compassion and ambition — ran on parallel paths, but sometimes they didn’t. And whenever those two forces collided, it was the ambition that won.

• His empathy and tenderness for people oppressed simply because their skins were dark, strong though it was in his makeup, was not as strong as his need for power. The compassion, genuine though it was, had always — always, without exception — proven to be expendable. That had been true throughout his life before he got to the Senate — and it was true after he got to the Senate

• when the two murdered decided to tell the world their story. they did so because, having been acquitted of Till’s murder, they could not be tried again for the same crime — and because of greed. A journalist, William Bradford Huie, offered them $4,000 for their story

• he echoed Douglas the Lion, who had said, “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will”; said MLK: “Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there”

• Montgomery’s Blacks kept on walking even when 10,000 people attended a White Citizens Council rally in the Montgomery Coliseum — ‘the largest pro-segregation rally in history’ — to hear Mississippi’s senior US State Senator James Eastland, shout that ‘in every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking [n-words]…African flesh eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives… All white are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead [n-words]

  • this is insane

• After the civil war, African-Americans had remained loyal to the party that had freed them — the republican party of Lincoln — for more than a half a century, from reconstruction to the depression

• James Reston’s words, journalists do a better job of covering revolution than evolution

• Even Roy Wilkins, normally so temperate, said that ‘Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man; but if he had fought WW2 the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German today

• for the Southern Manifesto was nothing less than an outright call by 100 elected legislators in the national gov’t for massive, unified, defiance of an order from the nation’s highest court

• “It was an effort to humiliate that was its only purpose’ Frank McCulloch says about Johnson’s maneuver on Paul Douglas’s adjournment motion. ”Push the button three times, he said, let’s pretend I’m a senator”. When he reached his suite, he went into his inner office and shut the door behind him, and cried, cried ‘for the first time in years’ he was to recall — cried less for himself than for his cause, the great cause, and for the strategic mistakes he felt he had made in fighting for it. “how many senators really care about civil rights? I asked myself. How could we ever reverse the tide? And what an imperfect and erring instrument I was to fail in so crucial a moment”

• Rayburn had another reason, which he didn’t divulge, for opposing Kennedy; he watched the young man’s performance in the House and considered him, as his biographers note, ‘a wealthy dilettante’

• incensed that some of the Southern Bell’s party lines were used by both black and white subscribers, Mississippi’s Monroe County Council demanded that the company segregate its telephones

• of the 23 peacetime annual sessions since 1933, when Congress had begun convening in January, exactly one had lasted as long as the end of August —eight months. Many had ended in June or July. And because of the holiday recesses Congress awarded itself — a traditional week in Feb for Lincoln’s birthday; another few days in Feb for Washington’s birthday; ten or eleven days for easter; additional vacations for Memorial Day and 4th of July; numerous pro forma Monday and Friday sessions at which most congressmen were traveling back and forth from their districts — even eight months actually meant far less.

• “What convinces is conviction. You simply have to believe in the argument you are advancing: if you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there”

• The urgency for laws to restrain the brutality of small-town southern sheriffs would be alleviated, for example, since in many a souther small town, blacks had enough votes to elect the sheriff they wanted

• The most important thing was that there be a bill. One of the reasons for this was psychological

• A victory over the South would begin destroying this mystique. Demonstrate that the South could be beaten and more attempts would be made to beat it.

• The talent required had, moreover, to consist not alone of insight but also of decisiveness, of an ability not only to recognize a crucial moment but to seize it, to see the opening — and to strike; to move fast enough so that the opportunity did not vanish, perhaps never to come again. It was the ability to recognize the key that might suddenly unlock votes that had seemed locked forever away — and to turn the key, and turn it fast. This combination of rare insight, rare decisiveness, rare willingness to act produced, when it was added to unbending determination and a gift for grand strategy, a rare form of political leadership: legislative leadership

• Part 3 would give him the right to enter civil cases with full power he usually exercises only in criminal cases — including the power to seek injunctions from a federal judge. Nor were schools the only area in which Part 3 would confer news powers on the federal gov’t. Russell said, for schools were not the only areas of daily life in which judicial edicts were possibles, and even probable. “Mr. President, if the Supreme Court so determines — and who can doubt their intent — that the separate hotels, eating places, and places of amusement for the two races in the South constitute a denial of equal privileges and immunities under the old law [section 1985].” Part 3 of the new law would mean that ‘this great power can be applied throughout the South…under this bill, if the AG should contend that separate eating pllaces, places of amusement and the like in the South… constituted a denial of equal privileges and immunities, he could move in with all the vast powers of this bill” and anyone who refused to conform to an injunction could be held in jail at the judge’s order, without benefit of trial by jury. “Under this bill, if the AG should contend that separate places of amusement…constituted a denial of equal privileges and immunities, he could move in… even if the person denied admission did not request him to do so and was opposed to his taking that action. The white people who operated the place of amusement could be jailed without the benefit of jury trial and kept in jail until they either rotted or until they conformed to the edict to integrate their place of business” and russell said “who can doubt for a moment’ that some AG — perhaps not the present AG but some future AG — would do just that ‘yielding to the demands of the NAACP and the ADA, who have been most zealous in pushing this proposal?”

• After Russell had ‘delivered an impassioned talk on the sanctity of the 1896 decision [Plessy] by the Supreme Court’, Eisenhower wrote, “I merely asked ‘then why is the 1954 decision not equally sacrosanct?’ Russell ‘stuttered’ and finally said, ‘There were wise men on the Court. Now we have politicians’. Then according to Eisenhower, he asked Russell to name a single member of the 1896 Court, and ‘He just looked at me in consternation and the subject was dropped”. The President’s description may not, however, have reflected with total faithfulness the overall tenor of his remarks

• Eisenhower’s statement gave Johnson new republican votes for the elimination of Part 3, but only a few. Having learned that Eisenhower could be flouted with impunity, Republican senators were more susceptible to the arguments, of either conscience or calculation, made to them by Knowland and Nixon, particularly by the latter; they felt that Nixon was likely to become the next President, and that he would be a very different kind of President from Eisenhower, more likely to remember who had not gone along with him. The arguments and pressure of their Senate Leader and the Vice President held a majority of the Republican senators in line behind Part 3

• To every crisis in his life, he had risen with that effort that made men say, ‘I never knew it was possible for anyone to work that hard’, that effort in which ‘days meant nothing, nights meant nothing’. Now in this greatest crisis, Lyndon Johnson, heart attack or no, rose again to that kind of effort. In the early-morning hours the residential districts of Washington and its suburbs were dark and silent, but now, in the night, the silence of a darkened street would be broken by the faint ringing of a telephone in a senator’s house

• Russell had no choice because, by mentioning Detroit, he had referred to Potter’s state, and if there was anything almost as sacred to Richard Russell as the untainted blood of a pure white race, it was the Senate rules. “I yield” he said grudgingly

• Johnson had cast Pastore in a demanding role: that of a skeptic and doubter who, by giving voice to his doubts, convinces himself that they are groundless and is converted into a true believer. The subject of his doubts, of course, was the jury trial amendment; Johnson had arranged with Pastore to, in Mann’s words, ‘feign skepticism’ of the amendment, to raise the questions about it that many senators were asking, and then to think through the answers to the questions out loud — and finally, seeing the validity of the answers, to be convinced by them, to ‘almost imperceptibly dissolve his skepticism into out right support for the amendment

• Strom Thurmond held the floor for 24 hours and eighteen minutes — the longest one man filibuster in the Senate’s history — drawing out the declaration of independence, the bill of rights, and George Washington’s farewell address

• Lincoln’s old saying that’ it was like a soup made from the shadow of a crow which had starved to death’

• ‘So there had been change’ Mcpherson would write, ‘so much that one could scarcely remember… the careful apprehensive steps which the Senate had taken in 957, the struggle over Title 3 and the jury trials, the different words for Douglas and Ervin, the praise and resentment’ But McPherson says, ‘it had all started there’. The great civil rights act of 1964 and 1965 had all started there, in 1957’

• ‘We face’, the President said ‘not a temporary emergency but a long-term responsibility… Hasty and extraordinary effort under the impetus of sudden fear…cannot provide for an adequate answer’ He said he knew he could get whatever he asked for from congress in the ay of defense spending… but the suggested expenditures were at the expense of needed civilian expenditures and were ‘unjustifiable’… we must remember that we are defending a way of life’ Turning America into a ‘garrison state’ would mean taking the risk that ‘all we are striving to defend…could disappear’

• When a vote was cast against him, the majority leader wrote down the name of the senator who had done so, making sure that what he was doing was obvious. This act of less than subtle intimidation had its desired effect: at the end of the vote, there were only eighteen names on the paper

• he paid off a lot of debts to Clinton Anderson by cooperating in Anderson’s efforts to defeat President Eisenhower’s nomination of Lewis Strauss to be Secretary of Commerce, the first defeat of a presidential nominee for a Cabinet office since 1925

• although he was giving up his seat in the Senate, he did not plan to give up his power there. During the weeks between Nov 5 and Jan 3, he devised an unprecedented plan: to continue, although he would no longer be a senator, to exercise power over the Senate’s Democratic majority. Under his plan, he would do this not as Majority Leader but as Chairman of the Senate’s Democratic caucus

• During his early weeks as VP, when he was presiding over the Senate while a senator. was delivering a lengthy speech to an almost empty chamber, he would sometimes step down from the dais, walk over to one of the few senators on the floor and begin to chat. The senators he approached were always courteous to him, but often they had to break off the conversation. They had other things to do. When he had had power, they had been anxious to talk to him, eager for a few moments of his time. They weren’t anxious now. After a little while, he stopped coming down from the dais.

• At one point in the book it includes a great section on how Johnson was able to pass a minimum wage increase bill. Realizing not enough opponents were on the floor at the time he quickly forced a vote on it

The Passage of Power

• He had long since given up asking JFK if he could accompany him on the presidential plane when they were flying to the same destination.(’You don’t mean to say that Mr. Johnson is again insisting on riding with me?” Kennedy had once asked his secretary in an exasperated tone)

• Although the VP was a member of the group(ExComm it was called) convened to advise JFK during the cuban missile crisis, the VP had been excluded from the meeting at which the final decision about the American response had been made

• And then, in the early hours of the morning, as one of those advisors recalls, ‘one of the wise, practical people around the table’ told him to his face that a President shouldn’t spend his time and power on lost causes, no matter how worthy those causes might be. “Well what the hell’s the presidency for?” LBJ replied

• In trying to understand presidential power, one would find that the transition of 1963 — the 7 week long passage of power between JFK and LBJ — is one of those moments. Because of the difficult — in some ways unique — challenges facing the incoming chief executive, it was a moment in which the use of presidential power to the limits of its practical, pragmatic possibilities was necessary if the transition was to be successful. Johnson used that power to those limits. To watch him deal with congress, deals with the Kennedys, confront a dozen other challenges for which there was no precedent — for which he had to create his own precedents — is to watch a president, in very difficult circumstances, triumph over them, and it is therefore a means of gaining new insight into some fundamental realities about the pragmatic potential in the American presidency

• The loss of trust in the presidency, of belief in what the President was saying, escalated under Richard Nixon, Johnson’s successor, but it began under Johnson

• And unlike others — the many, many others— in Washington who wanted the same thing he did, who had set their sights on the same goal, LBJ, born Aug 27, 1908, had mapped out a path to that goal, and he refused to be diverted from it

• When members of the house of reps. gave their speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the house for more than 2 decades, a limo as a resent, attached to the bak of the front seat was a plaque that read ‘ to our beloved Sam Rayburn — who would have been president if he had come from any place but the south’

• Now, in 1958, a race for a much greater prize stretched before him — a race for a prize so vast that the attention just of a state but of an entire country would be focused on it So the possibility of defeat — of humiliation — loomed before him larger than ever, and, “If he didn’t try, he couldn’t fail” So he didn’t try

• Watching Jack stroll onto the House floor one day with his hands in his pockets, a colleague said his attitude suggested: “Well, I guess if you don’t want to work for a living, this is as good a job as any”

• Addison’s seemed to be Kennedy’s diagnosis. Nonetheless Kennedy told his father he had decided to have a surgery., his mother was to write that “He told his father that…he would rather be dead than spend the rest of his life hobbling on crutches and paralyzed by pain” The operation took place in a NYC hospital on Oct 21., 1954. ‘37 years old, a US senator with a limitless future before him, he succumbed to the anesthesia knowing he had only a 50-50 chance of ever waking up again”, Goodwin wrote

• Jack Kennedy was not the only one of the 2 men, after all, who had, during his first campaign for Congress, driven himself to the limit of his physical endurance, and then beyond, until at the end of the campaign — but not until the end — he had collapsed in public. Kennedy’s collapse had been in that Bunker Hill day parade on the last day before the election; Johnson’s, during his first campaign for Congress, in 1937, was 2 days before the election, in the Travis County Courthouse

• The man Lyndon Johnson was running against — this man he didn’t take seriously — not only wanted the same thing he did, but was a man just as determined to get it as he was

• In the history of the US, only one senator — Warren Gamaliel Harding in 1921 — had ascended to the White House directly from the Senate, and Kennedy understood why: “No matter how you vote, somebody, is make happy and somebody unhappy” he explained “If you vote against enough people, you are dead politically”

• “The dramatic race” which “had glued millions to their TV sets” was “his great moment — the moment when he passed through a kind of political sound barrier to register on the nation’s memory” wrote another

• the speeches he dictated to her. “He wrote his own” Ms. Davis was to recall “He appeared to be such a disinterested guy, not involved, couldn’t care less, but then he’d say, ‘Mary, come on in.’ Then he would start dictating off the top of his head. The flow of language, his command of English, was extraordinary. It would come out beautifully — exactly what he wanted to say. And I’d think, “This — coming from you’. I surprised myself, but i came to the conclusion that he was brilliant — the brightest person I’ve ever known

• during his 8 years in the senate, according to one estimate, Kennedy was away from Washington at least half of the time it was in session — and conventional political observers complained bitterly about the dereliction. “This man seeks the highest elective office in the world not primarily as a politician, but as a celebrity” one wrote. Said New York Post columnist William Shannon “There is a growing tendency on the part of Americans to ‘consume’ political figures in much the same sense we consume entertainment personalities on television and in the movies. Month after month, from the glossy pages of Life to the multicolored cover of Redbook, Jack and Jackie Kennedy smile out at millions of readers; he with his tousled hair and winning smile, she with her dark eyes and beautiful face. We hear of her pregnancy, of his wartime heroism, of their fondness for sailing. But what has all this to do with statesmanship?” The answer was: Nothing.

• “It’s about Roosevelt and his father” Busby and Reedy knew what that meant. The relationship between Joe Kennedy and Roosevelt had ended in acrimony and bitterness, and Johnson, the young congressman, was a Roosevelt protege

• he had ‘no ambition save one’’ to please that demanding figure whose insistence on toughness and victory was so uncompromising; “he was willing to do anything to get his father’s respect

• In 1953, his father got him the job Mccarthy’s committee. Later his work with this committee would be glossed over, excused by saying he didn’t really believe in McCarthy’s anti-communist campaign. He did. “I felt it was worked that needed to be done then” he was to say. And on another occasion “At the time, I thought there was a serious internal security threat to the United States… and Joe McCarthy seemed to be the only one who was doing anything about it

• “So many people said to me…they were going to vote for Estes Kefauver because he had sent them a card or gone to their home. I said right there we should…send Christmas cards and go to their homes”

• “Wyoming was a state that Lyndon Johnson should have had; and we would have had if we had merely done some organization work in it a few months earlier” Reedy was to say. Johnson’s fear of trying had held him back until now — and it was too late

• “so when any man stands on the steps of the Capital and takes the oath of office of President, he is swearing to the support of church and state; he puts one hand on the Bible and raises the other hand to God as he takes the oath. And if he breaks his oath, he is not only committing a crime against the Constitution, for which the Congress can impeach him — and should impeach him — but he is committing a sin against God

• FDR Jr. was later to call this maneuver “the biggest political mistake” he had ever made. After the campaign, he went to Humphrey’s office and apologized, but Humphrey never forgave him

  1. Bobby Kennedy provided ‘documents’ saying Humphrey dodged WW2, which wasn’t true

• And then, when it was in effect too late, when his dream was all but dead, when his chances for the great prize were all but gone, Lyndon Johnson showed how much he wanted it all along. By the morning after that sad press conference, he had pulled himself together, and during the two months remaining before the Democratic national convention, he made a desperate lunge for the prize

• Not long before he left, Kennedy had given him an opening, and he charged through it. an American U2 had been shot down over Russia, and Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev, demanding that Eisenhower apologize, had broken up a schedule summit conference. Criticizing Eisenhower for authorizing a flight when it would jeopardize the conference, Kennedy said that had he been President he would have sent ‘regrets’ to Krushchev. Even as Kennedy was making his statement, the country was already rallying behind its President, as Americas had traditionally done in foreign affairs crises, and Johnson told his western audiences that that was what they should do now. “I want our President to be successful in his dealings with foreign nations” he said “If we get into trouble , it won’t be our President who is in a jam — it will be our nation that is in a jam” Krushchev was trying to divide the American people, he said, and “We ought not to be doing the job for him” Kennedy’s statement gave him the opportunity to remind his audiences that supportingEisenhower was what he had been having is Democratic senators do for eight years

• If he had held the West, the convention might well have been deadlocked, been thrown into the back rooms from which, he was certain, he would emerge as the nominee. And, it is easy to speculate, had he only started sooner, he could have held the West.

• On June 229, without warning, the two Texans suddenly announced that rather than Congress adjourning for the year before the convention, as had been expected, it would instead immediately recess, and return to complete the session on August 8 — after the convention. Longtime congressional observers could recall only one maneuver even faintly comparable: Harry Truman’s 1948 masterstroke, following the Republican convention, of call the Republican-controlled congress back into session, and challenging it to deliver on the convention’s campaign platform. Truman, however, had been challenging a republican congress, in which he had limited influence

• In private he was funnier. Riding in an elevator in the Capitol with a Republican congressman, Walter Judd of Minnesota, Johnson asked him, “Have you heard the news?” “What news? Judd responded, “Jack’s pediatricians have just given him a clean bill of health”

• And if he held Pennsylvania, Lawrence said, Kennedy couldn’t win on the first ballot, ‘and this guy is dead if it goes to a second ballot. He’s dead” But Pennsylvania was going to caucus the next morning. “You’ve got to tell me right now” Adlai was Adlai. “If the party wants me…” “No, no, Governor,” Lawrence said “Right now. I have to know right now” Finally Stevenson said cavalierly, “Do what you have to do Dave” Adlai’s aide Willard Wirtz said in despair, “Governor, are you sure that’s the message you want to give Governor Lawrence?” but Stevenson said it was. “Adlai could have said anything but that and he would’ve stopped Pennsylvania from going to Kennedy” said another Stevenson aide. Lawrence had given Stevenson a last chance — and Stevenson had refused it

• Kennedy had 763. Sam Rayburn shits his eyes, and began to cry. He put his head down on a friend’s chest, and tears ran down his cheeks. After a while, he sat up in his seat, squared his shoulders, lit a cigarette and took a long puff

• virtually its only constitutional responsibility that of residing over the Senate(”but shall have no vote” except in case of a tie; of so little power, in fact that its first occupant, John Adams called it “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived”

• but the theory remained the same : that because it was so hard for a texan to be elected President, becoming Vice President was a Texan’s best chance to reach the Oval Office

• If John Adams had once call the vice presidency ‘the most insignificant office’ he had also on another occasion, made a statement that cast the position in a different light, “I am Vice President”, Adams had said, “In this I am nothing, but I may be everything”

• Asked by the author almost a quarter of a century later for his reasons, he listed many, in his careful, lawyerly manner. Then there was a pause, quite a long one. “And that one heartbeat…” Jim Rowe said.

• Bobby Kennedy was later to state that his brother’s offer to Lyndon Johnson had been strictly pro forma, a courtesy to a powerful member of the party, and that he had neither expected him to accept the offer nor wanted him to

• Arthur Schlesinger, whose writings on John and Robert Kennedy have for decades set the template for the image of two brothers in history. “As for Robert Kennedy’s oral history makes clear, the offer of the vice-presidential nomination was pro forma; the Kennedy’s never dream Johnson would accept” Those accounts are no, however, supported by a number of actions that John F Kennedy actually took that day

• If these were the actions of a man who had made a pro forma offer, and was hoping it would not be accepted, they were strange ones. Rather, they were the actions of a man who very much wanted Lyndon Johnson on the ticket — who was determined, despite opposition, to persuade him to accept his offer

• were going to stage a floor fight against Johnson’s nomination, and that perhaps Johnson would prefer to withdraw. He said he asked Bobby one question: “Are you authorized to speak for your brother?” Bobby said no. “Come back and see the Speaker of the House when you are,” Sam Rayburn said

• He had read him now, all the way through: The younger man was a lot smarter than Johnson had thought he was — and a lot tougher, too. He was always, without exception, whatever the provocation, the gentleman — but a very tough gentleman

• for a presidential inauguration is a day for inspiration. “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans”; “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us wel or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty” —the phrases of Kennedy’s inaugural address were so gloriously inspiring even before the ringing voice said, “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country” that they summoned up, and, in some ways, summed up, the best of the American spirit, igniting hopes so that, almost on the instant it seemed, they summoned up a new era for Americans, an era of ideals, of brightness, of hope.

• Part of the explanation was the fact that Johnson, as Kennedy put it, “knows every newspaperman in Washington” and could, and probably would, leak to journalists any information they let him have. So they made sure he had as little as possible

• early in that week, the tone of ExComm’s discussions changed — and the catalyst for the change was Robert Kennedy. At some point, when the general opinion was still for a surprise bombing attack to be delivered the following Sunday, and much of ExComm was pressing the President to authorize it, Bobby passed a note to his brother: “I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor”

• And it contained also “very personal” sentences about the Russian premier’s own fears that mankind was on the edge of the abyss of nuclear war, as well as a statement — “Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knots of war; because the more the two of us pull, the tighter this knot will be tied

• when excomm reconvened about 9 o’clock that Sunday evening, the two brothers were a little late — and during the few minutes before they arrived, there were more strong words from Lyndon Johnson about how to handle the Russians, and, listening to him, Sorensen suddenly felt ‘chilled’. It wasn’t just the bellicosity of the words but the force behind them: Lyndon Johnson could persuade men, and, without the countervailing presence of the brothers, he might, Sorensen saw, be persuading these

• “but the next morning, a golden autumn Sunday morning” the Gronzy suddenly came to a dead stop, and the 9 o’clock newscasts were interrupted by a bulletin: Khruschev had accepted Kennedy’s terms, the no-missiles, no-invasion terms to which the President had brought him back by ignoring the second letter. The letter ended with this salutation to John Fitzgerald Kennedy: “With respect for you, Krushchev”. ExComm met that Sunday at 11. When the President walked into the room, everyone stood up, standing silently until he sat down. As he began the meeting, there wasn’t, Ted Sorensen recalls, “a trace of excitement or even exultation” in his bearing

• “He said after the Cuban Missile Crisis that there were 3 men on that Executive Committee that he would be glad to see become President of the United States: McNamara, Dillon, and his brother Bobby. He said that a couple of times”. 3 men who JFK would be happy to have succeed him as President. The Vice President wasn’t one of them

• His father was an anti-Semite — no matter how biographers may try to gloss over that trait, it was there: Jews were the problem with the movie industry, Joe Kennedy had found when he first went out to Hollywood

• The inescapable truth about Robert Kennedy is that the paradoxes are real, the conflicts do exist. Said another, “from one day to the next, you never know which Bobby Kennedy you’re going to meet”

• While he had apologized, however, the fact remained that the President hadn’t wanted Johnson there. The arrangements for a major political event that the Administration was holding in his state had been made — and he hadn’t been told about them

• Tom Connally had been a powerful senator, but no one remembered him. Lyndon Johnson had been a powerful senator. He was thinking he would never be President — and no one would remember him, either

• Caro seems to think there was a decent chance LBJ would be replaced on the ticket. JFK’s secretary said that they had had discussions about it in her book. All of a sudden there were a bunch of people attacking her credibility that never had before.

• There was an investigation into Bobby Baker that was going to implicate LBJ at the exact time Kennedy was in Dallas

• Jacqueline Kennedy and Caroline walked forward to the coffin and knelt beside it. “You just kiss”, Jackie had told her daughter, and Jackie knelt, touched the flag covering the coffin, and kissed it. The little girl beside her touched the flag, too, but, as if she couldn’t get close enough to her father that way, then put her hand under the flag to touch the coffin. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were standing at attention, tears running down their cheeks

• Never in American history 00 never in the history of any republic since, perhaps, the great pageants of Rome — had the passage of power been marked by such pageantry, pageantry which made the three days of funeral ceremonies for John F Kennedy three of the most memorable days in American history. The images of those days — of the coffin on the gun carriage; of the widow in her veil, erect and tearless in grief(tearless in public: inside the cathedral, she broke down once, crying and shaking uncontrollably); of her children, Caroline and John-John, the little girl’s hand creeping under the flag, and the little boy’s hand up in salute; of the long processions; of a hundred heads of state walking behind the caisson; of Black Jack and the matched grays; of Air Force One dipping its wings over Arlington — were poignant, dramatic, indelible

• Some of the governors facing him had risen to their office through their capacity for leadership, and others had learned leadership since they were in the office, but one way or another many of them had learned to know leadership when they saw it. When Johnson finished, they stood and applauded him. A reporter asked Pat Brown his reaction to the speech. This was the Pat Brown, who, three years before, had been thoroughly repelled by Johnson’s manner. “Astounded” Brown said.

• In essence, he said: Do you want the first action of the United States Senate to be a posthumous repudiation of John F Kennedy and slap in the face of Lyndon Johnson. Framing the issue that way changed votes, and by about 11 o'clock that night, he had enough so that he knew he had won. But for his purpose — to show he was in charge — he wanted not just a victory, but a rout. “that wheat thing — I hope that gets murdered” he said. He kept making calls. And the vote against the bill the next day would be 57 to 36. “Wheat bill — first Johnson victory” the headlines said

• The discussion had gone on, Fortas was to say, “for hours” — until about 2:30 in the morning — with Johnson sitting silently listening when, Fortas says, an ‘incident’ occurred, “which renewed my pride in him”. “One of the wise, practical people around the table” urged Johnson not to press for civil rights in his first speech, because there was no chance of passage, and a President shouldn’t waste his power on lost causes — no matter how worthy the cause might be. “The presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this” he said. “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Lyndon Johnson replied

• And then he arrived at the paragraphs that picked up on Kennedy’s inaugural phrase. “On the 20th day of January, in 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national work would not be finished ‘in the first 1000 days, nor in the life of his administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But, he said, let us begin”. Johnson paused, and there was the thrust of his head again and the narrowed eyes, narrowed almost into slits, and the stern hard mouth and the jaw jabbing out as he said, “Today, in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, let us continue. This is our challenge”, Johnson said, “not to hesitate, not to pause, not to turn about and linger over this evil moment, but to continue on our course so that we may fulfill the destiny that history has set for us” “Pause Pause” Johnson had written at that point. He would have had to do that anyway — because of the applause

• And then there were the final lines of the speech — from a song. He spoke them in a very soft voice, very slowly, with so much emotion that his voice seemed on the verge of breaking. No one listening to those last lines would recall that Lyndon Johnson was not an eloquent speaker. “America, America, God shed His grace on thee,” Lyndon Johnson said. “And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea”
  
  Everywhere you looked, Hugh Sidey said, “people were crying”
  

• Before the Warren Commission’s report, only 29% of the American public had believed Oswald had acted alone; a poll taken shortly after the report’s release showed that the percentage had risen to 87. That confidence would not last for long, in part because of the discovery of gaps in the commission’s work, in part because of a flood of books — a flood that has continued to this day

• By 1983, 75% of Americans disbelieved the lone gunman theory, and felt a conspiracy was involved, and the percentage has held relatively steady in polls taken since. In no poll was there consensus about the conspiracy’s origin or members

• “You know” Russell said “we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson”. There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role — perhaps the largest role — in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. “we could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can’t Lyndon”

• After her conversations with Johnson, Doris Kearns Goodwin was to write that he recognized “that the older men in the Senate were often troubled by a half-conscious sense that their performance was deteriorating with age” “Now they feared humiliation” Johnson told her. “they craved attention. and when they found it, it was like a spring in the desert” and among its benefits was “dependence on me”

• If Lyndon Johnson, dealing with Wilkins and Young and King and Randolph and Farmer about matters which concerned, at bottom, the color of their skin, was fooling these men, he was fooling men who were, where color was concerned, very hard to fool. He wasn’t fooling them, wasn’t merely posturing. No television cameras had been present, no reporter taking down his words, when he had sat on the steps in Cotulla with the janitor Thomas Coronado

• Lyndon Johnson used calling the Republican party ‘the party of Lincoln” as a tactic to get them to vote for Civil Rights

  1. I’m curious if he coined this

• Barely two weeks before, when he had become President, the two most important bills before Congress had been stalled, as they had been stalled for months, with no realistic sign of movement in any foreseeable future. Now, just two weeks into his presidency, both bills were moving

• “above all else” as Fredrik Logevall put it in Choosing War, a detailed study of American decision-making from 1963 through 1965, “to keep Vietnam from complicating his election-year strategy…the president judged all options on the war in terms of what they meant for November”

• Lyndon Baines Johnson was the greatest champion that black Americans and Mexican-Americans and indeed all Americans of color had in the White Hoouse, the greatest champion they had in all the halls of government. With the single exception of Lincoln, he was the greatest champion with a white skin that they had in the history of the Republic. He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those to whom social justice had so long been denied, the restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately need to be given some dignity, the redeemer of the promises made to them by America”

• The Kennedy family wanted Robert to be buried in Arlington, and Johnson, Clifford was to related, “wanted to discuss whether or not Bobby Kennedy had the right to be buried in Arlington” “Stunned” and “dumbfounded” by the call — “one of [my] saddest experiences” in dealing “with [Johnson]” — Clifford told Johnson

• Nor can the losses incurred during the Johnson presidency be measured only in numbers. “It is difficult..to remember, much less.. to understand, the extent to which ‘the President’ any President, was revered, respected” before Lyndon Johnson, Tom Wicker was to write shortly after Johnson’s presidency ended; difficult to remember so thoroughly had respect and reverence for the institution disappeared during that presidency. It is difficult for most Americans today — more than forty years, two generations, after that Presidency ended — to remember, or to understand, such reverence for a President, or for the institution of the Presidency, so lasting has been the damage inflicted on it. While much of the damage was inflicted by Richard Nixon, Johnson’s successor, it was under Johnson that the damage began

I'd like to quit thinking of the present, like right now, as some minor, insignificant preamble to something else.

— Richard Linklater, Dazed and Confused(1993)

The above quote is one that I feel the need to revisit every now and again. In our busy lives, it becomes almost second nature to look ahead and envision a time in which things will finally be settled down. A time when our real lives finally start.

Once I get my job figured out…once I finally meet someone…once I buy a house. These sentiments only change forms, but I’m not sure they necessarily go away. Life isn’t a series of big, milestones. Life is far more about what happens in between those milestones. It’s is made up of moments like right now, when you think you’re doing nothing. It’s a million pixels — no single one brighter than the others — combining to form the whole image of your life.

I don’t say that in some nihilistic way, nor do I mean to diminish some of the more significant moments(weddings, births, etc).1 Rather, I mean it as a way to try to re-attach meaning to the minor, atomic moments in your life.

Life isn’t waiting for us over the crest of some hill. It’s with us on the walk up. And it’ll be there when we get to the top and realize there’s another hill waiting behind it2.

We all struggle with the feeling of being behind, but it’s well to remember that the present isn’t some insignificant preamble.

Steve' Jobs’s favorite Bob Dylan track was One Too Many Morning. Jobs, infamous for being singularly focused, who most of us would agree seemed to have it all figured out, related most to a song about the feeling of falling behind.

We’re all just trying to figure it out.

If you at all resonate with this you should check out this essay called Real Life. It articulates the point I’m getting at far better than I ever could.

Orwell, however, gave us much more than 1984 or Animal Farm. He gave us the ultimate means to escape tyranny, totalitarianism, and — worst of all — business processes1. He gave us Rule Number 6.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

— George Orwell, Politics and The English Language

Behold the ultimate trump card of all rules, heuristics, processes, workflows, and operational procedures.

What is actually given by Orwell as advice for writing, turns out to be applicable to just about any set of rules. Rules and guardrails exist to help keep us in line, but there comes times at which it becomes necessary to break the very rules we created for ourselves. In certain contexts we need to give ourselves the ability to act freely — to break the rules.

But what are those contexts? When should we break the rules? The thing is, we never know ahead of time. Our approach to processes should not be that they will protect us and give us guidance in all areas and situations, or that they will always be right. But, rather, that they will guide us in the right direction in lieu of all other information. And that there will be times in which we need to act outside the constraints we created for ourselves.

Orwell has provided us with a clause that I think should be appended to just about every rule book or process map that exists.

Do not get me wrong, processes within a business are not inherently bad. But process can also create some negative effects. It lends itself to passiveness. Problems aren’t faced as head on, aren’t thought about as much.

Process can be a means to fight complexity within an organization, but sometimes complexity is good. Complexity, in a way can also mean variance. And when we work so hard to reduce variance, it can be easy to forget that we are also working against the variance at the positive end of the distribution — the type of variance that can change the entire form of your enterprise, for the better2.

A business process should not erase critical thinking. Process can and should be a good starting place for how to act, but it should not erase our ability to exercise best judgment if a situation calls for something different.

Sam Walton said, “No one looks to add bureaucracy. You have to be constantly looking to eliminate it or else it will build”. As time moves toward infinity processes naturally grow, and it becomes necessary for people to feel empowered to speak up. For them to question that maybe there is a better way to do things. A process cannot give you 100% coverage, and you should be ready to change your behavior accordingly.

Do whatever you can, sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

That is my one rule, or heuristic if you will, when it comes to mental health and how it needs to be dealt with.

People’s mental health and conditions take on countless forms, but I think that this is something that can apply across the board. By no means is it revolutionary, but I think its simplicity helps to reframe what we are trying to accomplish, that is — feeling better.

So if the only rule is that you can’t do nothing, what does that mean? I think it means that there is a world of options someone can take to help manage their mental health and that it is necessary for each person to find what works best for them and their situation.

For some, this might mean some type of therapy, for others it might mean meditation, for even more it might mean exercising more consistently. There’s no great way to know beforehand what works best for each individual. The same heat that softens the carrot, also hardens the egg.

Now this does not mean you get to do whatever you want. Sitting on the couch, watching endless TV does not count. This heuristic exists to help us find the thing that works best for us as opposed to the one-size-fits-all approach that can sometimes exist in any healthcare domain. However, we are not going in blind here, we have other people’s experiences to help inform our decisions here. We can be reasonably sure that eating only junk food and never working out will not greatly improve your mental health. But there’s reason to hope that eating healthy and working out could improve your mental health. You won’t know until you try. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. If that’s something that works for you, that’s awesome. If it’s something that doesn’t, don’t get discouraged it just means it’s time to try the next thing, whatever that may be. The only rule is that you can’t do nothing.

In the case of severe mental illness this advice might be a metaphorical bandaid on a metaphorical bullet wound. Yet there is still something to be said about not doing nothing. In more acute cases, it is not necessarily reasonable for people to simply mediate or exercise their way out of their condition — unfortunately it’s not that easy. In this case, not doing nothing might mean finding more professional help. Therapy can be a godsend for so many in helping them to manage their mental health. Still others might opt for a prescription suited to help them. None of these paths are mutually exclusive. The point remains that finding what works best for you and your health should always be the priority.

Each person is on their own journey, each of which is in a different phase. Some might just be starting out while others have been at this for most of their life. Some conditions are more chronic than others, while some might rear their heads now and again. Whoever you might be and whatever you might be going through, find what works best for you. The only rule is that you can’t do nothing.

One for the road

I may have lied at the top because I have found myself lately developing a second rule: No win is too small. I use this to try to still give myself credit for doing some of the little things —those things that are the first to go when you aren’t feeling right. Maybe for some it’s picking clothes off the floor or for others it’s their typical nighttime routine. The point here is that when you’re in the midst of feeling a certain way it can be easy to discount the value of many things in your life. Don’t get discouraged. No win is too small.

Good afternoon parents, family, guests, faculty, and to the Class of 2024

(Important pause for dramatic effect)

You’re 80 years old. You’re sitting in a park, or maybe on the beach, or at a wedding or a funeral. Wherever you are; you are thinking, reflecting. And not just thinking about anything; you are thinking about the most important things in your life[2].

Knowing just that, what do we think it is?

An infinite number of possibilities between now and then, that ‘most important thing’ could be anything. I’m not so sure. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t a person who exists that can predict what happens between now and then with any certainty for any individual here. But I’m not worried about the journey from point A to point B right now. I’m only concerned with Point B.

Because, today, I am going to contend to you that I can predict what will be in your head. In the infinite possibilities that exist for each one of us, the highs and the lows, the milestones: like a graduation, the personal achievements, the vacations, the mundaneness of some idle Tuesday, there exists only a small set of things in which we will receive true happiness from. True happiness. Not any of the fleeting moments we might experience throughout our lives. Happiness that emanates from within. Happiness that affirms every decision you have ever made.

As we age and our march towards infinity nears its end, and what was once a life spoiled with possibilities, turns into a life that’s been. What remains at the end will be simple. Our people and our community. Those you have shared your love with and those who have reflected it back upon you.

I say simple, not in an attempt to water it down, but to illustrate just how accessible it is to us all. So simple in fact that when we get caught up in the minutiae of everyday life it can sometimes fade into the background. So simple, that if taken seriously, you will never want for anything more in your life.

My point being, that regardless of the paths we choose to take or not take, we all end up in a pretty similar place. If you spend your summers in the South of France or working a summer camp, if you end up with 26 grandchildren or you never marry; it is well to remember our lives play out in our own heads, relative to our own values and our own expectations. All those things that seem so important right now will come and go. And as that all fades – and it will – the only things left will be the ones that have been present with us in every moment along the way.

Now if we know where we are going to end up, how does that change the way we might approach our journey? It’s a long journey so we need to pack light and we need to make sure those things are durable, that they’ll keep us warm on our coldest nights, and help us navigate in the darkest of places. These are our values. Maybe we bring Loyalty or Integrity or Empathy.

Patience, like underwear, is always best to have more than we think we need[3]. And I always save some room for one of my favorites – Wonder. A prism so often forgotten. Left behind once responsibility arrives to take its place. But every once and a while we are reminded to bring it out – allowing us to turn the most boring moments iridescent. Now we’re getting into the territory where each of us is going to be a little different. One of you might bring more Charity than I do, and someone else might bring enough Courage to fill this entire room.

These values are inexhuastive. They are not zero-sum. Give them away without question and without fear. And when you find them reflected back to you, you will be at home. Now this wouldn’t be a good commencement address unless I gave you some simple wrapped-up things to take with you. Take these with you, question them, dispense with them immediately. That’s your choice to make, I only ask that you don’t make it lightly.

Always have someone or something in your life that is more important than yourself

We are selfish creatures – millennia upon millennia of evolution has reinforced as much. There is not much we can do about that. However, when it comes to what we are selfish about we might be granted a bit more leeway.

A spouse, a family, a business, or even an ideal are all things that can be bigger than us; things that can move us beyond our own everyday myopic desires. Career achievement alone will not be enough to keep you warm on your darkest nights.

The details here do not matter as much, nor does the actual reality of things. Focusing on your career in hopes of supporting a family that doesn’t yet exist, but hopefully will 10 years down the line, might be enough for some. For others it could be a religious community or a charity.

But the more we can train ourselves to act outside our own, short-term self interests the easier it will become. And the more fulfilling each interaction in our daily lives will be.

Each and everyday

The most important day of your life is Day 14,231. Because you know what happens that day? Life happens. Just as much as it does on Day 6,732 or Day 23,980. Just as much as it does on your Graduation Day or on your wedding day.

All of the ordinary days serve as pixels in one giant image, pay as much attention to each as you can.[4]

Life moves quickly. Sometimes it can be tough to keep our heads above water. But the more often you can find times to remind yourself you are on this journey, the better. Don’t be afraid to find beauty in it all.

Agency is the most powerful weapon you can give someone

This one might be a bit out there, but bear with me. Loving as much as possible – given all of its downstream outcomes – should probably be the real lesson here. However, the key word here is weapon. Agency, which in my eyes is often a result of love, is something that people can wield for their own benefit. A strong belief within yourself about what you deserve – along with the willingness to act – can create pathways unavailable to those who might be more content with the cards they were dealt. I don’t mean to paint a picture of some reductive meritocracy where the only variable that matters is how hard you try. But knowing, instinctually, that you have the ability to impact your own destiny, is a belief that is worth more than just about anything. Sometimes we have all the control and sometimes we have none, perhaps it is better to lean more towards the former.

Or as Charlie Munger would say, in a way only he could, “Deserve what you want.”

Learn. From others and from yourself

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages you can give yourself in of life is a desire to learn and grow. This can be anything you make it. A musical instrument, serious academic studies, or latte art. Learning eventually bleeds into everything. You get familiar with who you are as a person and an awareness of who you aren’t. It can become an insatiable desire.

The best advice I can give you when it comes to learning is to cheat. Almost everything has been solved for you already by someone else, it will save you a lot of time if you can tap into that. Almost everything I know I can credit to other people for doing almost all the work for me. Picasso said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal”

Tap into other people’s experiences as much as possible. Stories of the ways in which people have succeeded and ways in which they have failed. Talk to some of our older guests here today, find out whether they regard close relationships or social status higher in terms of importance. Using other people’s experiences and wisdom is a cheat code that is available to all of us. Don’t be afraid to use it.

Everything in this speech has been sourced from someone else, somewhere along the way, whether I realize it or not. We stand on shoulders of giants, who stand on shoulders of giants. It becomes easy to forget, perhaps, that one day we might also become invisible giants ourselves.

Life’s journey is far from straight-forward but luckily we are not alone in it. Others will err, as will you. Learn from them, learn from yourself. Pick each other up along the way.

Sooner or later though, we’ll all end up on that park bench, or at the beach or wedding. Reflecting. Proud of the lives we’ve had.

Thank You.

Footnotes

[1] I will do my best to limit the amount of content I steal directly from this

[2]This is the deployment of the didactic metaphor(parable?) that David Foster Wallace mentions in This is Water

[3] 50% of the reason for this entire exercise was so I could make this joke

[4] stole this from Tim Urban

“I had broken myself of the habit of thinking in short song cycles and began reading longer and longer poems to see if I could remember anything I read about in the beginning. I trained my mind to do this, had cast off gloomy habits and learned to settle myself down. I read all of Lord Byron’s Don Juan, and concentrated fully from start to finish. Also, Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. I began cramming my brain with all kinds of deep poems. It seemed like I’d been pulling an empty wagon for a long time and now I was beginning to fill it up and would have to pull harder. I felt like I was coming out of the back pasture.. I was changing in other ways too. Things that used to affect me, didn’t affect me anymore. I wasn’t too concerned about people, their motives. I didn’t feel the need to examine every stranger that approached”

— Bob Dylan, Chronicles Volume 1

The above excerpt finally caused something to click for me that I think has been brewing in the background. It’s not even that it necessarily said anything novel — the best quotes often don’t — but more that I was in a mindset where I ready to finally absorb this version of things1. My realization: While most actions in our modern lives cause our attention span to degrade, there are things we can do to improve them.

The way I think about this degradation of attention spans is the same as why no one has ever accidentally solved a Rubik’s cube or why wired headphones would always tangle in your pocket. In the set of all possible things that can happen, a large majority of them lean toward further shuffling the Rubik’s cube or making the headphones even more tangled. Solving the Rubik’s cube or untangling the headphones calls for a very specific set of actions that all flow from one another. These are not randomly stumbled upon. One has to be actively trying to do these things. Likewise, if we don’t try to do anything to increase our attention spans, we should assume, by default, they will decrease.

I have been increasingly aware of attention span in the last few years. It’s hard not to be, knowing what we know about technology’s affect on them. Yet despite our awareness, I don’t think many of us do much to try to reverse this.

The extent of my efforts has been that for the last 16 months I’ve had an uncleared reminder on my phone that just says “The Importance of Attention Span”. I think the intention of this was to just remind me how much a competitive advantage a strong attention span can be is. I’d love to say this had any impact on my actual attention span, but in reality, it quickly became something my brain filtered out. The reminder itself — as flawed in approach as it may have been — was my way of trying to fight against my lapsing ability to focus.

For some time now, I’ve been worried about the eventual erosion of my attention span. That is, the ever-present forces of technology would at some point wear me down. Like a kid with a sandcastle on the beach; I could only delay the coming tide, not stop it.

Dylan’s observation gives me hope though. That there are ways for us to strengthen our attention spans. These options, however, do not seem to come naturally to us. Instead they will require a more active participation in order for us to see the intended results. Our attention spans are muscles, and if we do not exercise them, they will slowly atrophy.

So if attention spans are in fact muscles, and the same principles of exercise apply to them, how does this change anything?

For me I think it means attempting to take a much more active role in trying to be focused. As opposed to doing something and just hoping to fall into flow state, or waiting until every little distraction has been dealt with, can I instead just try to do something for as long as possible. Using the same principles of progressive overload, can I slowly lift myself into higher and higher levels of focus.

In an attempt to fully exhaust this attention span as a muscle metaphor, might there be a push/pull dichotomy here? There’s one side of things where I am actively pushing myself to focus on things longer. A somewhat popular focusing technique is the Pomodoro method. Could I slowly increase the amount of time that is attributed to the working stage?

The other side of things would be attempting to reduce technology use and the distractions that come with it. Jeff Bezos, goes so far as to call the smartphone “an attention-shortening device”. I think this is accurate. While I feel I do a decent job avoiding the more addictive sides of the internet(TikTok, Reels, etc), I still have times where I will end up in a similar state of dopamine-infused internet scrolling.

As with any other endeavor, this will be about trial and error. Even as I am writing this there have been moments where my focus has lapsed. I’ll do my best to try to stay diligent on this and see if I can track any sort of results. Like many other things in life, it takes a certain level of conviction. Believing that what you are doing is the right course of action even if the pay-off won’t be noticeable for years - even if the payoff is never truly noticeable.

I’m going to do my best to try different things. Sticking with what works, and disposing of what doesn’t. Perhaps over time there might be some real returns here in the form of an increased(or at least, no further decreased) attention span. But for now I’ll just take it one day at a time.

After reading a bunch of them you start to see patterns emerge. The things that were important to Buffet and Berkshire in the 1980s still get mentioned in the late 2010s. The consistent focus on the long term over any short term. The striking level of humility – even in the years with >30% returns. You read these things and it makes you question what everyone else is seeing.

Another unexpected thing was how funny Buffet was. There were multiple moments where I found myself laughing. Shareholder letters are probably not thought of as a reliable source for humor, but I think it just goes to show who Buffet and Munger are. Take your ideas very seriously, but never yourself.

There is so much to learn from these letters. Below I’ve compiled all of the notes that I’ve taken. I like to think my notes are of a higher quality than what chatGPT could come up with. There might be some side comments from me here or there, but for the most part I’ve tried to copy them verbatim.

1977

• we believe a more appropriate measure of managerial economic performance to be return on equity capital

• insurance companies offer standardized policies which can be copied by anyone. Their only products are promises. It is not difficult to be licensed, and rates are an open book. There are no important advantages from trademarks, patents, location, corporate longevity, raw material sources, etc., and very little consumer differentiation to produce insulation from competition. It is commonplace, in corporate annual reports, to stress the difference that people make. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it isn’t. But there is no question that the nature of the insurance business magnifies the effect which individual managers have on company performance. We are very fortunate to have the group of managers that are associated with us

• Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates and Hathaway Manufacturing were merged in 1955 to form Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

• we select our marketable equity securities in much the same way we would evaluate a business for acquisition in its entirety. We want the business to be (1) one that we understand,(2) with favorable long-term prospects, (3) operated by honest and competent people, and (4) available at a very attractive price

  • this doesn’t change much over the next 40-50 years. But I think how he would define point number 4 might. Very attractive price ≠ cheap, and he’s more explicit in saying that

1978

• no notes

1981

• We would rather buy 10% of Wonderful Business T at X per share than 100% of T at 2x per share. Most corporate managers prefer just the reverse, and have no shortages of stated rationales for their behavior

• Leaders, business or otherwise, seldom are deficient in animal spirits and often relish increased activity and challenge

  • Interventionistas, Incentives Rule Everything Around Me(IREAM)

• most organizations, measure themselves, are measured by others, and compensate their managers far more by the yardstick of size than by any other yardstick

  • IREAM

• many managements apparently were overexposed in impressionable childhood years to the story in which the imprisoned handsome prince is released from a toad’s body by a kiss from a beautiful princess. Consequently, they are certain their managerial kiss will do wonders for the profitability of Company T

  • overconfidence

• in other words, investors can always buy toads at the going price for toads. If investors instead bankroll princesses who wish to pay double for the right to kiss the toad, those kisses had better pack some real dynamite. We’ve observed many kisses but very few miracles. Nevertheless, many managerial princesses remain serenely confident about the future potency of their kisses — even after their corporate backyards are knee-deep in unresponsive toads

  • responsible corporate allocation

• your chairman, unfortunately, does not qualify for Category 2. And, despite a reasonably good understanding of the economic factors compelling concentration in Category 1, our actual acquisition activity in that cateogry has been sporadic and inadequate. Our preaching was better than our performance.(We neglected the Noah principle: predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does)

  • category 2: managerial superstars, who can recognize princes disguised as toads

• However, the price finally demanded, considering alternative uses for the funds involved, would have left our owners worse off than before the purchase. The empire would have been larger, but the citizenry would have been poorer

• we have made plenty of such mistakes — both in the purchase of non-controlling and controlling interests in business. Category(2) miscalculations are the most common. Of course, it is necessary to dig deep into our history to find illustrations of such mistakes — sometimes as deep as two or three months. For example, last year your Chairman volunteered his expert opinion on the rosy future of the aluminum business. Several minor adjustments to the opinion — now aggregating approximately 180 degrees — have since been required

• It is much easier for investors to utilize historic p/e ratios or for managers to utilize historic business valuation yardsticks than it is for either group to rethink their premises daily

• But the facts do not cease to exist, either because they are unpleasant or because they are ignored

• Beware of ‘dividends’ that can be paid out only if someone promises to replace the capital distributed

• It would be a bit humiliating to have our corporate value-added turn negative. But it can happen here as it has elsewhere, either from events outside anyone’s control. or from poor relative adaptation on our part

• It would be a bit humiliating to have our corporate value-added turn negative. But it can happen here as it has elsewhere, either from events outside anyone’s control or from poor relative adaptation on our part

• “Forecasts”, said Sam Goldwyn, “are dangerous, particularly those about the future”

• and of course the twin inflations, monetary and ‘social’(the tendency of courts and juries to stretch the coverage of policies beyond what insurers, relying upon contract terminology and precedent had expected), are unstoppable. Costs of repairing both property and people — and the extent to which these repairs are deemed to be the responsibility of the insurer — will advance relentlessly

• This pressure continues unabated and adds a new motivation to the others that drive many insurance managers to the push for business; worship of size over profitability, and the feat that market share surrendered never can be regained

• Irrespective of titles, Charlie and I work as partners in managing all controlled companies. To almost a sinful degree, we enjoy our work as managing partners

1982

• It was only a few years ago that we told you that the operating earnings/equity capital percentage, with proper allowance for a few other variables, was the most important yardstick of single-year managerial performance. While we still believe this to be the case with the vast majority of companies, we believe its utility in our own case has greatly diminished. You should be suspicious of such an assertion. Yardsticks seldom are discarded while yielding favorable readings. But when results deteriorate, most managers favor disposition of the yardstick rather than disposition of the manager

• to mangers faced with such deterioration, a more flexible system often suggests itself: just shoot the arrow of business performance into a blank canvas and then carefully draw the bullseye around the implanted arrow. We generally believe in pre-set, long-lived and small bullseyes.

  • Akin to some of the post-hoc problems I have with analytics

• as we look the major acquisitions that others made during 1982, our reaction is not envy, but relief that we were non-participants. For in many of these acquisitions, managerial intellect wilted in competition with managerial adrenaline. The thrill of the chase blinded the pursuers to the consequences of the catch. Pascal’s observation seems apt: “It has struck me that all men’s misfortunes spring from the single cause that they are unable to stay quietly in one room”

  • commentary on both attention span and interventionistas

• Berkshire’s economic goal remains to produce a long-term rate of return well above the return achieved by the average large American corporation. Our willingness to purchase either partial or total ownership positions in favorably-suited businesses, coupled with reasonable discipline about the prices we are willing to pay, should give us a good chance of achieving our goal

  • obvious adams

• but in the insurance business, to return to that subject, capacity can be instantly created by capital plus an underwriter’s willingness to sign his name. (Even capital is less important in a world in which state-sponsored guaranty funds protect many policyholders against insurer insolvency) Under almost all conditions except that of fear for survival — produced, perhaps, by a stock market debacle or a truly major natural disaster — the insurance industry operates under the competitive sword of substantial overcapacity

• Future profitability of the industry will be determined by current competitive characteristics, not past ones. Many managers have been slow to recognize this. It’s not only generals that prefer to fight the last war. Most business and investment analysis also comes from the rear-view mirror

• Jack Byrne and Bill Snyder are achieving the most elusive of human goals — keeping thing simple and remembering what you set out to do

• Yogi Berra, “You can observe a lot just by watching”

• partial sale of itself — and that is what the issuance of shares to make an acquisition amounts to

• if, however, the thirst for size and action is strong enough, the acquirer’s manager will find ample rationalizations for such a value-destroying issuance of stock. Friendly investment bankers will reassure him as to the soundness of his actions(Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut)

• rationalizations by stock issuing managers

  • “we have to grow” (who, it might be asked, is the ‘we’? For present shareholders, the reality is that all existing businesses shrink when shares are issued. If 1) your family owns a 120- acre farm and 2) you invite a neighbor with a 60 acre farm of comparable land to merge his farm into an equal partnership — with you to be managing partner, then 3) your managerial domain will have grown to 180 acres but you will have permanently shrunk by 25% your family’s ownership interest in both acreage and crops. Managers who want to expand their domain at the expense of owners might better consider a career in government

• a man is not charmed if a spaniel defaces his lawn, just because it’s a spaniel and not a Saint Bernard. And the wishes of sellers can’t be the determinant of the best interests of the buyers — what would happen if, heaven forbid, the seller insisted that as a condition of the merger the CEO of the acquirer be replaced?

• the language utilized in mergers tends to confuse the issues and wncourage irrational actions by managers. For example, ‘dilution’ is usally carefully calculated on a pro forma basis for both book value and current earnings per share. Particular emphasis is given to the latter item. When that calculation is negative(dilutive) from the acquiring company’s standpoint, a justifying explanation will be made(internally, if not elsewhere) that the lines will cross favorably at some point in the future. (While deals often fail in practice, they never fail in projections — if the CEO is visibly painting over a prospective acquisition, subordinates and consultants requisite projections to rationalize any price) Should the calculation produce numbers that are immediately positive — that is, anti-dilutive — for the acquirer, no comment is thought to be necessary

• if corporate pregnancy is going to be the consequence of corporate mating, the time to face that fact is before the moment of ecstasy

• Managers and directors might sharpen their thinking by asking themselves if they would sell 100% of their business on the same basis they are being asked to sell part of it. And if it isn’t smart to sell all on such a basis, they should ask themselves why it is smart to sell a portion. A cumulation of small managerial stupidities will produce a major stupidity — not a major triumph. (Las Vegas has been built upon the wealth transfers that occur when people engage in seemingly-small disadvantageous capital transactions

• They like to acquire businesses with demonstrated consistent earning power(future projections are of little interest to them, nor are ‘turn-around’ situations

• A compact organization lets all of us spend time managing the business rather than managing each other

• Charlie Munger, my partner in management, will continue to operate from Los Angeles wether or not the Blue Chip merger occurs. Charlie and I are interchangeable in business decisions. Distance impedes us not at all: we’ve always found a telephone call to be more productive than a half-day committee meeting

1983

• Business Principles

  • our attitude is partnership

  • we eat our own cooking

  • we will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet

  • and we react with great caution to suggestions that our poor businesses can be restored to satisfactory profitability by major capital expenditures.(The projections will be dazzling — the advocates will be sincere — but, in the end, major additional investment in a terrible industry usually is about as rewarding asa struggling in quicksand

  • Our guideline is to tell you the business facts that we would want to know if our positions were reversed

  • The CEO who misleads others in public may eventually mislead himself in private

• After a year with 32% increase in the book per-share value: We never take the one-year figure very seriously. After all, why should the time required for a planet to circle the sun synchronize precisely with the time required for business actions to pay off? Instead, we recommend not less than a 5 year test as a rough yardstick of economic performance.

• Then goes on to say how they might have down years: Watch out for our explanation if that occurs as Goethe observed, “When ideas fail, words come in very handy”

• Book value is an accounting concept, intrinsic business value is an economic concept

  • an analogy will suggest the difference. Assume you spend identical amounts putting each of 2 children through college. The book value(measured by financial input) of each child’s education would be the same. But the present value of the future payoff(the intrinsic business value) might vary enormously — from zero to many times the cost of the education. So, also, do businesses having equal financial input end up with wide variations in value

• You can live a full and rewarding life without ever thinking about Goodwill and its amortization. but students of investment and management should understand the nuances of the subject

  • economic Goodwill is the concept of having to discount the cost of a company on your balance sheet if the book value of the company and what you bought it for differ. This is covered extensively in the appendix to this letter

• a hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise

• hyperactive equity markets subvert rational capital allocation and act as pie shrinkers. Adam Smith felt that all non-collusive acts in a free market were guided by an invisible hand that led an economy to maximum progress; our view is that casino-type market and hair-trigger investment management act as an invisible foot that trips up and slows down a forward moving economy

1984

• Accomplishing this will require a few big ideas — small ones just won’t do. Charlie Munger, my partner in general management, and I do not have any such ideas at present, but our experience has been that they popup occasionally. (how’s that for a strategic plan?)

• We try to avoid compromise of these standards, although we find doing nothing the most difficult task of all.(One English statesman attributed his country’s greatness in the 19th century to a policy of ‘masterly inactivity’. This is a strategy that is far easier for historians to commend than for participants to follow)

• operated at a gross margin of 44.4%(that is, on average, customers paid it $100 for merchandise that had cost it $55.60 to buy)

• our evaluation of the integrity of Mrs. B and her family was demonstrated when we purchased 90% of the business: NFM had never. had an audit and we did not request one; we did not take an inventory nor verify the receivable; we did not check property titles. We gave Mrs. B a check for $55 million and she gave us her word. That made for an even exchange

• In Geico’s case, as in all of our investments, we look to business performance, not market performance. If we are correct in expectations regarding the business, the market eventually will follow along

• At Berkshire, we have added what we thought were appropriate supplemental reserves but in recent years they have not been adequate. It is important that you understand the magnitude of the errors that have been involved in our reserving. You can thus see for yourselves just how imprecise the process is, and also judge whether we may have some systemic bias that should make you wary of our current and future figures

• As you can see from reviewing the table, my errors in reporting to you have been substantial

  • my errors is a high integrity phrasing

• Companies that would be out of business if they realistically appraised their loss costs have, in some cases, simply preferred to take an extraordinary optimistic view about these yet-to-be-paid sums. Others have engaged in various transactions to hide true current loss costs. Both of these approaches can ‘work’ for a considerable time: external auditors cannot effectively police the financial statements of property/casualty insurers. If liabilities of an insurer, correctly stated, would exceed assets, it falls to the insurer to volunteer this morbid information. In other words, the corpse is supposed to file the death certificate. Under this ‘honor system’ of mortality, the corpse sometimes gives itself the benefit of the doubt

• Even if they don’t get lucky, the penalty to managers is usually no greater for a $100 million shortfall than one of $10 million; in the meantime, while the losses mount, the managers keep their jobs and perquisites

• In Intelligent Investor, the last section of the last chapter begins with, “Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike” This section is called “A Final Word”, and it is appropriately titled

• Most managers have very little incentive to make the intelligent-but-with-some-chance-of-looking-like-an-idiot decision. Their personal gain/loss ratio is all too obvious: if an unconventional decision works out well, they get a pat on the back and, if it works out poorly, they get a pink slip. (Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.)

• we view the long term outlook for dollars as dismal. We believe substantial inflation lies ahead, although we have no idea what the average rate will turn out to be. Furthermore, we think there is a small, but not insignificant, chance of runaway inflation

• But we believe that present fiscal policy — featuring a huge deficit — is both extremely dangerous and difficult to reverse. (So far, most politicians in both parties have followed Charlie Brown’s advice: “No problem is so big that it can’t be run away from”) Without a reversal, high rates of inflation may be delayed(perhaps for a long time), but will not be avoided. If high rates materialize, they bring with them the potential for a runaway upward spiral

• The managers at fault periodically report on the lessons they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons. (Failure seems to go to their heads.)

• Only by committing available funds to much better businesses were we able to overcome these origins. (It’s been like overcoming a misspent youth.) Clearly, diversification has served us well

1985

• 48.2% gain in net worth over the year. Same year as Hailey’s comet, neither will be seen again in my lifetime

• management cannot determine market prices, although it can, by its disclosures and policies, encourage rational behavior by market participants

• But long periods of substantial undervaluation and/or overvaluation will cause the gains of the business to be inequitably distributed among various owners, with the investment result of any given owner largely depending upon how lucky, shrewd, or foolish he happens to be

• security profits in a given year bear similarities to a college graduation ceremony in which the knowledge gained over four yers is recognized on a day when nothing further is learned

• Our Vice Chairman, Charlie Munger, has always emphasized the study of mistakes rather than successes, both in business and other aspects of life. He does so in the spirit of the man who said: “All I want to know if where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there” You’ll immediately see why we make a good team: Charlie likes to study errors and I have generated ample material for him, particularly in our textile and insurance businesses

• I won’t close down businesses of sub-normal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate rate of return. However, I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition, and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable

• We also made a major acquisition, Waumbec Mills, with the expectation of important synergy( a term widely used in business to explain an acquisition that otherwise makes no sense)

• Viewed individually, each company’s capital investment decision appeared cost-effective and rational; viewed collectively, the decisions neutralized each other and were irrational(just as happens when each person watching a parade decides he can see a little better if he stands on his tiptoes). After each round of investment, all the platers had more money in the fame and returns remained anemic

• the situation is suggestive of Samuel Johnson’s horse: “a horse that can count to 10 is a remarkable horse — not a remarkable mathematician” Likewise, a textile company that allocates capital brilliantly within its industry is a remarkable textile company - but not a remarkable business

• when returns on capital are ordinary, an earn-more-by-putting-up-more record is no great managerial achievement. You can get the same result personally while operating from your rocking chair. Just quadruple the capital you commit to a savings account and you will quadruple your earnings. You would hardly expect hosannas for that particular accomplishment. Yet, retirement announcements regularly sing the praises of CEOs, who have, say, quadrupled earnings of their widget company during their reign — with no one examining whether this gain was attributable simply t many years of retained earnings and the workings of compound interest

• In fact, the business project in which you would wish to have an option frequently is a project in which you would reject ownership. (I’ll be happy to accept a lottery ticket as a gift — but I’ll never buy one)

• We believe, further, that such factors as seniority and age should not affect incentive compensation(though they sometimes influence basic compensation) A 20 year old who can hit .300 is as valuable to us as a 40 year old performing as well

• In past reports, I have told you that Berkshire’s strong capital position — the best in the industry — should one day allow us to claim a distinct competitive advantage in the insurance market. With the tightening of the market, that day arrived. Our premium volume more than tripled last year, following a long period of stagnation. Berkshire’s financial strength(and our record of maintaining unusual strength through thick and thin) s now a major asset for us in securing good business

• we correctly foresaw a flight to quality by many large buyers of insurance and reinsurance who belatedly recognized that a policy is only an IOU - and who, in 1985, could not collect on many of their IOUs. These buyers today are attracted to Berkshire because of its strong capital position. But, in a development we did not foresee, we also are finding buyers drawn to us because our ability to insure substantial risks sets us apart from the crowd

• a few years such as this, and even slow-witted reinsurers can lose interest, particularly in explosive lines where the proper split in premium between issuer and reinsurer remain impossible to even roughly estimate. The behavior of reinsurers finally becomes like that of Mark Twain’s cat: having once sat on a hot stove, it never did so again — but it never again sat on a cold stove, either

• At Berkshire we have never played the lay-it-off-at-a-profit game and until recently, that put us at a severe disadvantage in certain lines. Now the table are turned: we have the price to be right, we are willing to write a net line larger than that of any but the largest insurers

• This explanation, however, recalls all too well a story told me many years ago by the then Chairman of General Reinsurance company. He said that ever year his managers told him that ‘except for the Florida hurricane’ or ‘except for Midwestern tornadoes’ they would have had a terrific year. Finally he called the group together and suggested that they form a new operation — the Except-for-Insurance company — in which they would henceforth place all of the business that they later wouldn’t want to count

• In any business, insurance or otherwise, ‘except for’ should be excised from the lexicon. If you are going to play the game, you must count the runs scored against you in all nine innings. Any manager who consistently says ‘except for’ and then reports on the lessons he has learned from his mistakes may be missing the only important lesson — namely, that the real mistake is not the act, but the actor

• Inevitably, of course, business errors will occur and the wise manager will try to find the proper lessons in them. But the trick is to learn most lessons from the experience of others. Managers who have learned much from personal experience in the past usually are destined to learn much from personal experience in the future

• We are enormously indebted to those academics: what could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest — whether it be bridge, chess, or stock selection than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy

• Today, corporate instability is an inevitable consequence of widely-diffused ownership of voting stock. At any time a major holder can surface, usually mouthing reassuring rhetoric but frequently harboring uncivil intentions. By circumscribing our blocks of stock as we often do, we intend to promote stability where it otherwise might be lacking. That kind of certainty, combined with a good manager and a good business, provides excellent soil for a rich financial harvest. That’s the economic case for our arrangement

• On October 10, well after the ESOP deal had fallen through, I wrote a short letter to Ralph, whom I did not know. I said we admired the company’s record and asked if he might like to talk. Charlie and I met Ralph for dinner in Chicago on October 22 and signed an acquisition contract the following week

• The Scott Fetzer purchase illustrates our somewhat haphazard approach to acquisitions. We have no master strategy, no corporate planners delivering us insights about socioeconomic trends, and no staff to investigate a multitude of ideas presented by promoters and intermediaries. Instead, we simply hope that something sensible comes along — and, when it does, we act

• I hope you come to this year’s meeting, which will be held on May 20 in Omaha. There will be only one change: after 48 years of allegiance to another soft drink, your Chairman, in an unprecedented display of behavioral flexibility, has converted to the new Cherry Coke. Henceforth, it will be the Official Drink of the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

1987

• what counts of course is the rate of gain in per-share business value, not book value. In many cases, a corporation’s book value and business value are almost totally unrelated

  • chatGPT says: By business value, Buffett is referring to the intrinsic value of the company, which includes all aspects of the business that contribute to its ability to generate earnings and cash flow in the future. This can include tangible assets like property and equipment, as well as intangible factors like brand strength, management quality, market position, and so on. Buffett is emphasizing that book value is an accounting measure that may not always reflect the true economic value or potential of a business.

• their premium of business value to book value has widened for 2 simple reasons: we own some remarkable businesses and they are run by even more remarkable managers

  • you have a right to question that second assertion. After all, CEOs seldom tell their shareholders that they have assembled a bunch of turkeys to run things

• For good reasons, we had very high expectations when we joined with these managers. In every case, however, our experience has greatly exceeded those expectations. We have received far more than we deserve, but we are willing to accept such inequities. (We subscribe to the view Jack Benny expressed upon receiving an acting award: “I don’t deserve this, but then, I have arthritis and I don’t deserve that either.”)

• With managers like ours, my partner, Charlie Munger, and I have little to do with operations. in fact, it is probably fair to say that if we did more, less would be accomplished. We have no corporate meetings, no corporate budgets, and no performance reviews (though our managers, of course, oftentimes find such procedures useful at their operating units).

1990

• Berkshire’s 26-year record is meaningless in forecasting future results; so also, we hope, is the 1 year record. We continue to aim for a 15% average annual gain in intrinsic value. But, as we never tire in telling you, this goal becomes ever more difficult to reach as our equity base, now $5.3 billion, increases

• intrinsic value is necessarily an estimate; Charlie and I might, in fact, differ by 10% in our appraisals

• My own role in operations may be best illustrated by a small tale concerning my granddaughter, Emily, and her 4th birthday party last fall. Attending were other children, adoring relatives, and Beemer the clown, a local entertainer who includes magic tricks in his act. Beginning these, Beemer asked Emily to help him by waving a ‘magic wand’ over ‘the box of wonders’. Green handkerchiefs went into the box, Emily waved the wand, and Beemer removed blue ones. Loose handkerchiefs went in and, upon a magisterial wave by Emily, emerged knotted. After four such transformations each more amazing than its predecessor, Emily was unable to contain herself. Her face aglow, she exulted, “Gee I’m really good at this”. And that sums up my contributions to the performance of Berkshire’s business magicians

• In reality, however, earnings can be as pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them. Eventually truth will surface, but in the meantime a lot of money can change hands

• We care not whether the auditors hear a tree fall in the forest; we do care who owns the tree and what’s next done with it

• When coca-Cola uses retained earnings to repurchase its shares, the company increases our percentage ownership in what I regard to be the most valuable franchise in the world. (Coke, also, of course, ses retained earnings in many other value-enhancing ways). Instead of repurchasing stock, Coke could pay those funds to us in dividends, which we could then use to purchase more Coke shares. That would be a less efficient scenario: Because of taxes we would pay on dividend income, we would not be able to increase our proportionate ownership to the degree that Coke can, acting for us. If this less efficient procedure were followed, however, Berkshire would report far greater ‘earnings’

• Ike’s crew always includes son Alan and son-in-law Marin Cohn and Donald Yale. And when things are busy — that’s often — they are joined by Ike’s wife, Roz, and his daughters. Janis and Susie. In addition, Fran Blumkin, wife of Louie(Chairman of Nebraska Furniture Mart and Ike’s cousin), regularly pitches in. Finally, you’ll find Ike’s 89 year old mother, Rebecca, in the store most afternoons, Wall Street Journal, in hand. Given a family commitment like this, is it any surprise that Borsheim’s runs rings around competitors whose managers are thinking about how soon 5 o’clock will arrive?

• Since I didn’t predict what has happened, you may question the value of my prediction about what will happen. Nevertheless, I’ll proffer a judgement

  • reminds me the “we proceed” line from the Lessons of History

• our business in primary property insurance is small and we believe that Berkshire shareholders, if properly informed, can handle unusual volatility in profits so long as the swings carry with them the prospect of superior long-term results(Charlie and I always have preferred a lumpy 15% return to a smooth 12%)

• Our expectations can be based on little more than subjective judgments — for this kind of insurance, historical loss data are of very limited value to us as we decide what rates to charge today

  • Taleb’s extremistan domain

• Finally, both stick with what they understand and let their abilities, not their egos, determine what they attempt(Thomas Watson Sr of IBM followed the same rule: “I’m no genius”, he said “I’m smart in spots - but I stay around those spots”

• Wells Fargo is big — it has 56 billion in assets — and has been earning more than 20% on equity and 1.25% on assets. Our purchase of one-tenth of the bank may be thought of as roughly equivalent to our buying 100% of a 5 billion bank with identical financial characteristics. But were we to make such a purchase, we would have to pay about twice the 290 million we paid for Wells Fargo. Moreover, that 5 billion bank, commanding a premium price, would present us with another problem: We would not be able to find a Carl Reichardt to run it

• Investors who expect to be ongoing buyers of investments throughout their lifetimes should adopt a similar attitude toward market fluctuations; instead many illogically become euphoric when stock prices rise and unhappy when they fall. they show no such confusion in their reaction to food prices: Knowing they are forever going to be buyers of food, they welcome falling prices and deplore price increases

• Identical reasoning guides our thinking about Berkshire’s investments. We will be buying businesses — or small parts of a businesses, called stocks — year in, year out as long as I live(and longer, if Berkshire’s directors attend the seances I have scheduled) Given these intentions, declining prices for businesses benefit us, and rising prices hurt us

• The most common cause of low prices is pessimism — some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It’s optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer

• None of this means, however, that a business or stock in an intelligent purchase simply because it is unpopular; a contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What’s required is thinking rather than polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell’s observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: “Most men would rather die than think. Many do”

• The roads of businesses are riddled with potholes; a plan that requires dodging them all is a plan for disaster

• In the final chapter of The Intelligent Investor Ben Graham forcefully rejected the dagger thesis, “Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety” Forty-two years after reading that, I still think those are the right three words. The failure of investors to heed this simple message caused them staggering losses as the 1990s began

• In a business selling a commodity-type product, it’s impossible to be a lot smarter than your dumbest competitor

• Any good ad salesman will tell you that trying to sell something without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark

• Charlie and I frequently get approached about acquisitions that don’t come close to meeting our tests: We’ve found that if you advertise an interest in buying collies, a lot of people will call hoping to sell you their cocker spaniels. A line from a country song expresses our feeling about new ventures, turnarounds, or auction-like sales: “When the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me”

• Were I to die tomorrow, you could be sure of three things: 1, none of my stock would have to be sold; 2, both a controlling shareholder and a manager with philosophies similar to mine would follow me; and 3, Berkshire’s earnings would increase by $1 million annually, since Charlie would immediately sell our corporate jet, The Indefensible(ignoring my wish that it be buried with me)

• includes an example of a letter he sent to a business owner with whom he was interested in purchasing their business. Well worth the read but i won’t retype it here

1992

• we’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good

• A tolerance for short-term swings improves our long-term prospects. In baseball lingo, our performance yardstick is slugging percentage, not batting average

• In the search [for acquisitions], we adopt the same attitude one might find appropriate in looking for a spouse: It pays t be active, interested and open-minded, but it does not pay to be in a hurry

• In the past, I’ve observed that many acquisition-hungry managers were apparently mesmerized by their childhood reading of the story about the frog-kissing princess. Remembering her success, they pay dearly for the right to kiss corporate toads, expecting wondrous transfigurations. Initially, disappointing results only deepen their desire to round up new toads. “Fanaticism”, said Santyana, “consists of redoubling your efforts when you’ve forgotten your aim.” Ultimately, even the most optimistic manager must face reality. Standing knee-deep in unresponsive toads, he then announces an enormous “restructuring” charge. In this corporate equivalent of a Head Start program, the CEO receives the education but the stockholders pay the tuition

• After several failures of this type, I finally remembered some useful advice I got from a golf pro(who, like all pros who have had anything to do with my game, wishes to remain anonymous). Said the pro: “Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice makes permanent”

• When we allocate capital today, we are thinking about what will maximize look through earnings [8 years in the future]

• We do not, however, see this long term focus as eliminating the need for us to achieve decent short-term results as well. After all, we were thinking long-range thoughts 5 or 10 years ago, and the moves we made then should be paying off now. If plantings made confidently are repeatedly followed by disappointing harvests, something is wrong with the farmer.

• The saying. “a fool and his money are soon invited everywhere” applies in spades in reinsurance, and we actually reject more than 98% of business we are offered

• But how, you will ask, does one decide what’s an “attractive” [price]? In answering this question most analysts feel they must choose between two approaches customarily thought to be in opposition: “value” and “growth”. Indeed, many investment professionals see any mixing of the two terms as a form of intellectual cross-dressing. We view that as fuzzy thinking(in which, it must be confessed, I myself engaged some years ago). In our opinion, the two approaches are joined at the hip: Growth is always a component in the calculation of value, constituting a variable whose importance can range from negligible to enormous and whose impact can be negative as well as positive

• we think the very term “value investing” is redundant

• we insist on a margin of safety in our purchase price. If we calculate the value of a common stock to be only slightly higher than its price, we’re not interested in buying. We believe this margin-of-safety principle, so strongly emphasized by Benjamin Graham, to be the cornerstone of investment success

1993

• Right now, markets are difficult, but they can — and will — change in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. In the meantime, we’ll try to resist the temptation to do something marginal simply because we are long on cash. There’s no use running if you’re on the wrong road

• Speaking for our own shares,, Charlie and I have absolutely no complaint about these taxes. We know we work in a market-based economy that rewards our efforts far more bountifully than it does the efforts of others whose output is of equal or greater benefit to society. Taxation should, and does, partially redress this inequity. But we still remain extraordinarily well-treated.

• tax-paying investors will realize a far, far greater sum from a single investment that compounds internally at a given rate than from a succession of investments compounding at the same rate. But I suspect many Berkshire shareholders figured that out long ago

• The value of float funds — in effect, their transfer price as they move from the insurance operation to the investment operation — should be determined simply by the risk-free, long-term rate of interest

  • how they try to benchmark their performance

• the test of a reinsurer is its ability and willingness to pay losses under trying circumstances, not its readiness to accept premiums when things look rosy

• There has recently been a substantial increase in reinsurance capacity. Close to $5 billion of equity capital has been raised by reinsurers, almost all of them newly-formed entities. Naturally these new entrants are hungry to write business so that they can justify the projections they utliized in attracting capital. This new competition won’t affect our 1994 opperations; we’re filled up there, primarily with business written in 1993. But we are now seeing signs of price deterioration. If this trend continues, we will resign ourselves to much-reduced volume, keeping ourselves available, though, for the large, sophisticated buyer who requires a super-cat insurer with large capacity and a sure ability to pay losses

  • good lessons on not chasing bad business just for the sake of a bigger book

• Yet that same CEO, when it comes to running his personal investment portfolio, will offhandedly — and even impetuously — move from business to business when presented with no more than superficial arguments by his broker for doing so. The worst of these is perhaps, “You can’t go broke taking a profit.” Can you imagine a CEO using this line to urge his board to sell a star subsidiary? In our view, what makes sense in business also makes sense in stocks: An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business

• In 1938…Fortune did an excellent story on [Coke]. In the second paragraph the writer reported: “Several times every year a weighty and serious investor looks long and with profound respect at Coca-Cola’s record but comes regretfully to the conclusion that he is looking too late. The specters of saturation and competition rise before him

• Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime it’s just too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions

• We define risk, using dictionary terms, as ‘the possibility of loss or injury’

• In their hunger for a single statistic to measure risk, however, they forget a fundamental principle: It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong

  • a lot of views that eventually will be echoed by Taleb in this section

• the true investor welcomes volatility.

• After we buy a stock, consequently, we would not be disturbed if markets closed for a year or two. We don’t need a daily quote on our 100% position in See’s or H.H. Brown to validate our well-being. Why, then, should we need a quote on our 7% interest in Coke?

• In our opinion, the real risk that an investor must assess is whether his aggregate after-tax receipts from an investment (including those he receives on sale) will, over his prospective holding period, give him at least as much purchasing power as he had to begin with, plus a modest rate of interest on that initial stake. Though this risk cannot be calculated with engineering precision, it can in some cases be judged with a degree of accuracy that is useful. The primary factors bearing upon this evaluation are:

  • The certainty with which the long-term economic characteristics of the business can be evaluated;

  • The certainty with which management can be evaluated, both as to its ability to realize the full potential of the business and to wisely employ its cash flows;

  • The certainty with which management can be counted on to channel the rewards from the business to the shareholders rather than to itself;

  • The purchase price of the business;

  • The levels of taxation and inflation that will be experienced and that will determine the degree by which an investor's purchasing-power return is reduced from his gross return.

• These factors will probably strike many analysts as unbearably fuzzy, since they cannot be extracted from a database of any kind. But the difficulty of precisely quantifying these matters does not negate their importance nor is it insuperable. Just as Justice Stewart found it impossible to formulate a test for obscenity but nevertheless asserted, “I know it when I see it,” so also can investors — in an inexact but useful way — “see” the risks inherent in certain investments without reference to complex equations or price histories

• if you are a know-something investor, able to understand business economics and to find five to ten sensibly-priced companies that posses important long-term competitive advantages, conventional diversification makes no sense for you. It is apt simply to hurt your results and increase your risk. I cannot understand why an investor of that sort elects to put money into a business that is his 20th favorite rather than simply adding that money to his top choice — the businesses he understands the best and that present the least risk, along with the greatest profit potential. In the words of the prophet Mae West: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”

• At our annual meetings, someone usually asks “What happens to this place if you get hit by a truck?” I’m glad they are still asking the question in this form. It won’t be too long before the query becomes: “What happens to this place if you don’t get hit by a truck?”

1996

• I have repeatedly told you, what counts at Berkshire is intrinsic value, not book value

  • they set forth their economic principles in their Owner’s Manual

• after tax headquarters expense amounts to less than 2bp. Even so, Charlie used to think this expense percentage outrageously high

• Seriously, costs matter.

  • For example, mutual funds incur corporate expenses — largely payments to the funds’ managers — that average about 100bp, a levy likely to cut the returns their investors earn by 10% or more over time. Charlie and I make no promises about Berkshire’s results. We do promise you, however, that virtually all of the gains Berkshire makes will end up with shareholders. We are here to make money with you, not off you

• over time, the aggregate gains made by Berkshire shareholders must of necessity match the business gains of the company. When the stock temporarily overperforms or underperforms the business, a limited number of shareholders — either the sellers or the buyers — receive outsized benefits at the expense of those they trade with. Generally, the sophisticated have an edge over the innocents in the game

• We made two acquisitions in 1996, both possessing exactly the qualities we seek — excellent business economics and an outstanding manager

• Though the music was loud — Why must bands play as if they will be paid by the decibel

• Therefore, to get a job with us, just employ the tactic of the 76-year-old who persuaded a dazzling beauty of 25 to marry him. “How did you ever get her to accept?” ask his envious contemporaries. The comeback: “I told her i was 86”

• In other words, the attractiveness of our super-cat business will take a great many years to measure. What you must understand, however, is that a truly terrible year in the super-cat business is not a possibility — it’s a certainty. The only question is when it will come. I emphasize this lugubrious point because I would not want you to panic and sell your Berkshire stock upon hearing that some large catastrophe had cost us significant amount. If you would tend to react that way, you should not own Berkshire shares now

• So what are the true odds of our having to make a payout during the policy’s term? We don’t know — nor do we think computer models will help us, since we believe the precision they project is chimera. In fact, such models can lull decision-makers into a false sense of security and thereby increase their chances of making a really huge mistake

• In Lou’s part of Geico’s operation, we again tie compensation to performance — but to investment performance over a 4 year period, not to underwriting results nor to the performance of Geico as a whole. We think it foolish for an insurance company to pay bonuses that are tied to overall corporate results when great work on one side of the business — underwriting or investment — could conceivably be completely neutralized by bad work on the other

  • Lou is the CFO

• In 1961, President Kennedy said that we should not ask what our country can do for us, but rather ask what we can do for our country. Last year we decided to give his suggestion a try — and who says it never hurts to ask? We were told to mail $860M in income taxes to the Us Treasury. Here’s a little perspective on that figure: If an equal amount had been paid by only 2000 other taxpayers, the government would have had a balanced budget in 1996 without needing a dime of taxes — income or Social Security or what have you — from any other American. Berkshire shareholders can truly say “I gave at the office” Charlie and I believe that the large tax payments by Berkshire are entirely fitting. The contribution we thus make to society’s well-being is at most only proportional to its contribution to ours. Berkshire prospers in America as it would nowhere else

• the reasons why people today buy boxed chocolates, and the reason they buy them from us rather from someone else, are virtually unchanged from what they were in the 1920s when the See family was building the business. Moreover, these motivations are not likely to change over the next 20 years, or even 50

• I was recently studying the 1896 report of Coke( and you think that you are behind in your reading!)

• I can’t resist one more Candler quote: “Beginning this year about March 1st… we employed ten traveling salesmen by means of which, with systematic correspondence from the office, we covered almost the territory of the Union” That’s my kind of sales force

  • quote from 1896

• Companies such as Coca-Cola and Gillette might well be labeled “The Inevitables”

  • obviously many companies in high-tech business or embryonic industries will grow much faster in percentage terms than will The Inevitables. But I would rather be certain of a good result than hopeful of a great one

• For every inevitable, there are dozens of imposters, companies now riding high but vulnerable to competitive attacks

• Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid

• Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me when we contemplate investing in businesses that in general look outstanding. All to often, we’ve seen value stagnate in the presence of hubris or of boredom that caused the attention of the managers to wander

• Intelligent investing is not complex, though that is far from saying that it is easy. What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note the word “selected”: You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.

• In our view, though, investment students need only 2 well-taught courses — How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices

• If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes

• if history supplied all of the answers, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians

• early in 1996, before any accrued dividends had been paid. I tried once more to unload our holdings — this time for about 335M. You’re lucky: I again failed in my attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In another context, a friend once asked me: “If you’re so rich, why aren’t you smart?” After reviewing my sorry performance with USAir, you may conclude he had a point

2001

• Charlie and I can promise that your economic results from Berkshire will parallel ours during the period of your ownership: We will not rake cash compensation, restricted stock or option grants that would make our results superior to yours.

• A gorgeous woman slinks up to a CEO at a party and through moist lips purrs, “I’ll do anything — anything — you want. Just tell me what you would like*.”* With no hesitation, he replies, “Reprice my options”

• We now have completed 37 Berkshire ears without having a CEO of an operating business elect to leave us to work elsewhere

• As they would not be if they had options, all of these managers are true owners. They face the downside of decisions as well as the upside. They incur a cost of capital. And they can’t ‘reprice’ their stakes: What they paid is what they live with.

• Key principle of good underwriting: They limit the business they accept in a manner that guarantees they will suffer no aggregation of losses from a single event or from related events that will threaten their solvency. They ceaselessly search for possible correlation among seemingly-unrelated risks

• Referencing the risk of terrorism:

  • The probability of mind-boggling disasters, though very low at present, is not zero.

  • There can be no checkmate against hydra-headed foes

• [Says he was aware of the threat of terrorism but didn’t protect against it properly]. I violated the Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn’t count; building arks does

• Berkshire’s shareholder constituency is knowledgable and willing to accept volatility in earnings

• If “winning” however, is equated with market share rather than profits, trouble awaits. “No” must be an important part of any underwriter’s vocabulary

• Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking

• We do not believe Berkshire’s equity holdings as a group are undervalued. Our restrained enthusiasm for these securities is matched by decidedly lukewarm feelings about the prospects for sticks in general over the next decade or so

  • he was right

• Debt is a four-letter word around Berkshire

• However, prior to our purchasing them, a few of our subsidiaries had employee-match programs and we feel fine about continuing them: It’s not our style to tamper with successful business cultures

• It would not only be wrong to do so, it would be idiotic. We need all of the talent we can find, and we have learned that able and trustworthy managers, employees and suppliers come from a very wide spectrum of humanity

2004

• there is a really good discussion around the national debt and trade deficit within

• My message to [the CEOs of our operating businesses]: Run your business as if it were the only asset your family will own over the next hundred years

• if you examine the 35 years since the 1960s ended, you will find that an investor’s return, including dividends, from owning the S&P has averaged 11.2% annually (well above what we expect future returns to be). But if you look for years with returns anywhere close to that 11.2% - say, between 8% and 14%- you will find only one before 2004. In other words, last year’s “normal” return is anything but.

  • this was very surprising

• To combat employees’ natural tendency to save their own skins, we have always promised NICO’s workforce that no one will be fired because of declining volume, however severe the contraction. (This is not Donald Trump’s sort of place).

• An insurance organization that doesn’t care deeply about underwriting at a profit this year is unlikely to care next year either.

• Reinsurance — insurance sold to other insurers who wish to lay off part of the risks they have assumed — should not be a commodity product

• Many insurers regard a $100 billion industry loss as “unthinkable” and won’t even plan for it. But at Berkshire, we are fully prepared. Our share of the loss would be probably be 3% to 5%, and earnings from our investments and other businesses would be comfortably exceed that cost. When “the day after” arrives, Berkshire’s checks will clear

• the real test of earning power of a derivatives operation is what it achieves after operating for an extended period in a no-growth mode. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out

• Before making this commitment, Bill and Scott again asked for my advice. Initially, I was pretty puffed up about the fact that they were consulting me. But then it dawned on me that the opinion of someone who is always wrong has its own special utility to decision-makers

• I viewed the selection of a flight provider as akin to picking a brain surgeon: you simply want the best. (Let someone else experiment with low bidder.)

• As I mentioned last year, holdings of this kind are a decided change for us. Before March 2002, neither Berhsire nor I had ever traded in currencies. But the evidence grows that our trade policies will put unremitting pressure on the dollar for many years to come — so since 2002 we’ve heeded that warning in setting our investment course

• the current account deficit(the sum of three items, the most important by far being the trade deficit) and our national budget deficit are often lumped as ‘twins’. They are anything bt. They have different causes and different consequences. A budget deficit in no way reduces the portion of the national pie that goes to Americans. As long as other countries and their citizens have no net ownership of the U.S., 100% of our country’s output belongs to our citizens under any budget scenario, even one involving a huge deficit

• Proponents of the trade status quo are fond of quoting Adam Smith: “What is prudence in the conduct of every family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.”
  
  I agree. Note, however, that Mr. Smith’s statement refers to trade of products for product, not of wealth for product as our country is doing to the tune of $.6 trillion annually. Moreover, I am sure that he would never have suggested that “prudence” consisted of his “family” selling off part of its farm every day in order to finance its overconsumption. Yet that is just what the “great kingdom” called the United States is doing

• I can’t resist mentioning that Jesus understood the calibration of independence far more clearly than do the protesting institutions. In Matthew 6:21 He observed: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

• Self-interest inevitably blurs introspection

2007

• John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: “it is interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine”

• people who thought house price appreciation would continue and cure all problems. The country is experiencing widespread pain because of that erroneous belief. As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out — and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight

• Their CEO’s scorecards for success are not whether they obtain his job but instead are the long-term perfomances of their businesses. Their decisions flow froma. here-today, here-forever mindset. I think our rare and hard-to-replicate managerial structure gives Berkshire a real advantage

• in the 1988 annual report he explains arbitrage

• With the Pritzkers, as with Berkshire, a deal is a deal

• Charlie and Warren trust Byron Trott completely

• Charlie and I look for companies that have a) a business we understand; b) favorable long-term economics; c) able and trustworthy management; and d) a sensible price tag. We like to buy the whole business or, if management is our partner, at least 80%. When control-type purchases of quality aren’t available, though, we are also happy to simply buy small portions of great businesses by way of stockmarket purchases. It’s better to have a part interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.

• A truly great business must have an enduring “moat” that protects excellent returns on invested capital. The dynamics of capitalism guarantee that competitors will repeatedly assault any business “castle” that is earning high returns

• Our criterion of “enduring” causes us to rule out companies in industries prone to rapid and continuous change. Though capitalism’s “creative destruction” is highly beneficial for society, it precludes investment certainty. A moat that must be continuously rebuilt will eventually be no moat at all. Additionally, this criterion eliminates the business whose success depends on having a great manager.

• There’s no rule that you have to invest money where you earned it. It’s a mistake to do so: Truly great businesses, earning huge returns on tangible assets, can’t for any extended period reinvest a large portion of their earnings internally at high rates of return

• Just as Adam and Eve kickstarted an activity that led to 6B humans, See’s has given birth to multiple new streams of cash for us(the biblical command to ‘be fruitful and multiply ’is one they take seriously at Berkshire)

• The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.

  • hilarious

• To sum up, think of three types of “savings accounts.” The great one pays an extraordinarily high interest rate that will rise as the years pass. The good one pays an attractive rate of interest that will be earned also on deposits that are added. Finally, the gruesome account both pays an inadequate interest rate and requires you to keep adding money at those disappointing returns.

• Why did I say “no”? The only explanation is that my brain had gone on vacation and forgot to notify me. (My behavior resembled that of a politician Molly Ivins once described: “If his I.Q. was any lower, you would have to water him twice a day.”)

• A line from Bobby Bare’s country song explains what too often happens with acquisitions: “I’ve never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I’ve sure woke up with a few.”

• But, finally, they caught me in a moment of weakness, and I caved, telling them I would go to $35.05. With that, I explained, they could tell their client they had wrung the last nickel out of me. At the time, it hurt.

• Susan came to Borsheims 25 years ago as a $4-an-hour saleswoman. Though she lacked a managerial background, I did not hesitate to make her CEO in 1994. She’s smart, she loves the business, and she loves her associates. That beats having an MBA degree any time. (An aside: Charlie and I are not big fans of resumes. Instead, we focus on brains, passion and integrity.

• In the strange world department, note that American Express and Wells Fargo were both organized by Henry Wells and William Fargo, Amex in 1850 and Wells in 1852. P&G and Coke began business in 1837 and 1886 respectively. Start-ups are not our game

• I should emphasize that we do not measure the progress of our investments by what their market prices do during any given year. Rather, we evaluate their performance by the two methods we apply to the businesses we own. The first test is improvement in earnings, with our making due allowance for industry conditions. The second test, more subjective, is whether their “moats” – a metaphor for the superiorities they possess that make life difficult for their competitors – have widened during the year. All of the “big four” scored positively on that test.

• A footnote: We paid the IRS tax of $1.2 billion on our PetroChina gain. This sum paid all costs of the U.S. government – defense, social security, you name it – for about four hours.

• talking about sold option contracts on their books: We are certain to make many more payments

• The U.S. dollar weakened further in 2007 against major currencies, and it’s no mystery why: Americans like buying products made elsewhere more than the rest of the world likes buying products made in the U.S. Inevitably, that causes America to ship about $2 billion of IOUs and assets daily to the rest of the world. And over time, that puts pressure on the dollar

• When the dollar falls, it both makes our products cheaper for foreigners to buy and their products more expensive for U.S. citizens. That’s why a falling currency is supposed to cure a trade deficit. Indeed, the U.S. deficit has undoubtedly been tempered by the large drop in the dollar. But ponder this: In 2002 when the Euro averaged 94.6¢, our trade deficit with Germany (the fifth largest of our trading partners) was $36 billion, whereas in 2007, with the Euro averaging $1.37, our deficit with Germany was up to $45 billion. Similarly, the Canadian dollar averaged 64¢ in 2002 and 93¢ in 2007. Yet our trade deficit with Canada rose as well, from $50 billion in 2002 to $64 billion in 2007. So far, at least, a plunging dollar has not done much to bring our trade activity into balance. There’s been much talk recently of sovereign wealth funds and how they are buying large pieces of American businesses. This is our doing, not some nefarious plot by foreign governments. Our trade equation guarantees massive foreign investment in the U.S. When we force-feed $2 billion daily to the rest of the world, they must invest in something here. Why should we complain when they choose stocks over bonds? Our country’s weakening currency is not the fault of OPEC, China, etc. Other developed countries rely on imported oil and compete against Chinese imports just as we do. In developing a sensible trade policy, the U.S. should not single out countries to punish or industries to protect. Nor should we take actions likely to evoke retaliatory behavior that will reduce America’s exports, true trade that benefits both our country and the rest of the world.

• At the time, Amazon bonds were priced as “junk” credits, though they were anything but. (Yes, Virginia, you can occasionally find markets that are ridiculously inefficient – or at least you can find them anywhere except at the finance departments of some leading business schools.)

• Despite our country’s many imperfections and unrelenting problems of one sort or another, America’s rule of law, market-responsive economic system, and belief in meritocracy are almost certain to produce evergrowing prosperity for its citizens.

• (I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death – abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term “thinking outside the box.”)

• Former Senator Alan Simpson famously said: “Those who travel the high road in Washington need not fear heavy traffic.” If he had sought truly deserted streets, however, the Senator should have looked to Corporate America’s accounting.

• It’s amusing that commentators regularly hyperventilate at the prospect of the Dow crossing an even number of thousands, such as 14,000 or 15,000. If they keep reacting that way, a 5.3% annual gain for the century will mean they experience at least 1,986 seizures during the next 92 years. While anything is possible, does anyone really believe this is the most likely outcome?

• Many helpers are apparently direct descendants of the queen in Alice in Wonderland, who said: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Beware the glib helper who fills your head with fantasies while he fills his pockets with fees

• After decades of pushing the envelope – or worse – in its attempt to report the highest number possible for current earnings, Corporate America should ease up. It should listen to my partner, Charlie: “If you’ve hit three balls out of bounds to the left, aim a little to the right on the next swing.”

• A story I told you some years back illustrates our problem in accurately estimating our loss liability: A fellow was on an important business trip in Europe when his sister called to tell him that their dad had died. Her brother explained that he couldn’t get back but said to spare nothing on the funeral, whose cost he would cover. When he returned, his sister told him that the service had been beautiful and presented him with bills totaling $8,000. He paid up but a month later received a bill from the mortuary for $10. He paid that, too – and still another $10 charge he received a month later. When a third $10 invoice was sent to him the following month, the perplexed man called his sister to ask what was going on. “Oh,” she replied, “I forgot to tell you. We buried Dad in a rented suit.”

• At 84 and 77, Charlie and I remain lucky beyond our dreams. We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a “business” gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to that experienced by many people who contribute as much or more to our society’s well-being. Moreover, we have long had jobs that we love, in which we are helped in countless ways by talented and cheerful associates. Every day is exciting to us; no wonder we tap-dance to work. But nothing is more fun for us than getting together with our shareholder-partners at Berkshire’s annual meeting. So join us on May 3rd at the Qwest for our annual Woodstock for Capitalists. We’ll see you there.

2009

• We tend to let our many subsidiaries operate on their own, without our supervising and monitoring them to any degree. That means we are sometimes late in spotting management problems and that both operating and capital decisions are occasionally made with which Charlie and I would have disagreed had we been consulted. Most of our managers, however, use the independence we grant them magnificently, rewarding our confidence by maintaining an owner-oriented attitude that is invaluable and too seldom found in huge organizations. We would rather suffer the visible costs of a few bad decisions than incur the many invisible costs that come from decisions made too slowly – or not at all – because of a stifling bureaucracy.

• talks about Ajit Jain and how he runs an insurance business

  • if Charlie, I, and Ajit are ever in a sinking boat — and you can only save on of us — swim to Ajit

• he eats crow for pushing Geico to start up a credit card. They lost 100M+

• talking about managing the risks that come with derivatives: If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of misjudgments made by a Risk Committee or Chief Risk Officer

  • Charlie and Him believe a CEO must not delegate risk control

• Our recommendation in respect to the use of advisors remains: “Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut

• he makes a few jokes in here that are hilarious

2012

• Charlie and I love investing large sums in worthwhile projects, whatever the pundits are saying. We instead heed the words from Gary Allan’s new country song, “Every Storm Runs Out of Rain.”

• A thought for my fellow CEOs: Of course, the immediate future is uncertain; America has faced the unknown since 1776. It’s just that sometimes people focus on the myriad of uncertainties that always exist while at other times they ignore them (usually because the recent past has been uneventful).

• If you are a CEO who has some large, profitable project you are shelving because of short-term worries, call Berkshire. Let us unburden you.

• As much as Charlie and I talk about intrinsic business value, we cannot tell you precisely what that number is for Berkshire shares (or, for that matter, any other stock)

• Property-casualty (“P/C”) insurers receive premiums upfront and pay claims later. In extreme cases, such as those arising from certain workers’ compensation accidents, payments can stretch over decades. This collect now, pay-later model leaves us holding large sums – money we call “float” – that will eventually go to others. Meanwhile, we get to invest this float for Berkshire’s benefit. Though individual policies and claims come and go, the amount of float we hold remains quite stable in relation to premium volume. Consequently, as our business grows, so does our float

• First by float size is the Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group, run by Ajit Jain. Ajit insures risks that no one else has the desire or the capital to take on. His operation combines capacity, speed, decisiveness and, most important, brains in a manner unique in the insurance business. Yet he never exposes Berkshire to risks that are inappropriate in relation to our resources. Indeed, we are far more conservative in avoiding risk than most large insurers. For example, if the insurance industry should experience a $250 billion loss from some mega-catastrophe – a loss about triple anything it has ever experienced – Berkshire as a whole would likely record a significant profit for the year because it has so many streams of earnings. All other major insurers and reinsurers would meanwhile be far in the red, with some facing insolvency.

  • talebian

• a sound insurance operation needs to adhere to four disciplines. It must (1) understand all exposures that might cause a policy to incur losses; (2) conservatively assess the likelihood of any exposure actually causing a loss and the probable cost if it does; (3) set a premium that, on average, will deliver a profit after both prospective loss costs and operating expenses are covered; and (4) be willing to walk away if the appropriate premium can’t be obtained.

• That old line, “The other guy is doing it, so we must as well,” spells trouble in any business, but none more so than insurance

• they view EBITDA as deeply flawed

• Markets can behave in extraordinary ways, and we have no interest in exposing Berkshire to some out-of-the-blue event in the financial world that might require our posting mountains of cash on a moment’s notice.

• Charlie and I believe in operating with many redundant layers of liquidity, and we avoid any sort of obligation that could drain our cash in a material way. That reduces our returns in 99 years out of 100. But we will survive in the 100th while many others fail. And we will sleep well in all 100

• Examining when dividends make sense: A company’s management should first examine reinvestment possibilities offered by its current business – projects to become more efficient, expand territorially, extend and improve product lines or to otherwise widen the economic moat separating the company from its competitors

• The third use of funds – repurchases – is sensible for a company when its shares sell at a meaningful discount to conservatively calculated intrinsic value

• Value is destroyed when purchases are made above intrinsic value

• Provides a great example on how dividends may or may not make sense for a company on page 20

• Above all, dividend policy should always be clear, consistent and rational. A capricious policy will confuse owners and drive away would-be investors. Phil Fisher put it wonderfully 54 years ago in Chapter 7 of his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, a book that ranks behind only The Intelligent Investor and the 1940 edition of Security Analysis in the all-time-best list for the serious investor. Phil explained that you can successfully run a restaurant that serves hamburgers or, alternatively, one that features Chinese food. But you can’t switch capriciously between the two and retain the fans of either.

• recommends The Outsiders by William Thorndike, The Clash of Cultures by Jack Bogle, and Investing Between the Lines by Laura Rittenhouse

2017

• once a CEO hungers for a deal, he or she will never lack for forecasts that justify the purchase. Subordinates will be cheering, envisioning, enlarged domains and the compensation levels that typically increase with corporate size. Investment bankers, smelling huge fees, will be applauding as well. (don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut) If the historical performance of the target falls short of validating its acquisition, large ‘synergies’ will be forecast. Spreadsheets never disappoint

• Our aversion to leverage has dampened our returns over the years. But Charlie and I sleep well. Both of us believe it is insane to risk what you have and need in order to obtain what you don’t need

• The less the prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we must conduct our own

• Charlie and I never will operate Berkshire in a manner that depends on the kindness of strangers

• A well-known analyst VJ Dowling has pointed out, the loss reserves of an insurer are similar to a self-graded exam. Ignorance, wishful thinking, or occasionally, downright fraud can deliver inaccurate figures about an insurer’s financial condition for a very long time

• Almost 90% of our investments are made in the US. America’s economic soil remains fertile

• Ben Graham’s oft-quoted maxim proves true: “In the short run, the market is a voting machine; in the long run, however, it becomes a weighing machine”

• in the next 53 years our shares(and others) will experience declines resembling those in the table. No one can tell you when these will happen. The light can at any time go from green to red without pausing at yellow. When major declines occur, however, they offer extraordinary opportunities to those who are not handicapped by debt. That’s the time to heed these lines from Kipling’s IF: If you can keep you head when all about you are losing theirs…if you can wait and not be tired by waiting…if you can think — and not make thoughts your aim… if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you..Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it

• What investors then need instead is an ability to both disregard mob fears or enthusiasms and to focus on a few simple fundamentals. A willingness to look unimaginative for a sustained period — or even to look foolish — is also essential

2019

• when business ownership was sliced into small pieces — “stocks” — buyers in the pre-Smith years usually thought of their shares as a short-term gamble on market movements. Even at their best, stocks were considered speculations. Gentlemen preferred bonds.

• Sometimes, alas, retentions produce nothing. But both logic and our past experience indicate that from the group we will realize capital gains at least equal to — and probably better than — the earnings of ours that they retained

• [Has a discussion on Lubrizol, an oil additive company they own that had a fire. They expect to be covered by insurance] But, as the late Paul Harvey was given to saying in his famed radio broadcasts, “Here’s the rest of the story”. One of the largest insurers of Lubrizol was a company owned by…uh, Berkshire. In Matthew 6:3, the Bible instructs us to “Let not the left hand know what the right hand doeth.” Your chairman has clearly behaved as ordered

• The nature of our insurance contracts is such that we ca never be subject to immediate or near-term demands for sums that are of significance to our cash resources. That structure is by design and is a key component in the unequaled financial strength of our insurance companies. That strength will never be compromised

• Forecasting interest rates has never been our game, and Charlie and I have no idea what rates will average over the next year, or ten or thirty years. Our perhaps jaundiced view is that the pundits who opine on these subjects reveal, by that very behavior, far more about themselves than they reveal about the future.

• Today, my will specifically directs its executors — as well as the trustees who will succeed them in administering my estate after the will is closed — not to sell any Berkshire shares…The will goes on to instruct the executors — and, in time, the trustees — to each year convert a portion of my A shares into B shares and then distribute the Bs to various foundations. Those foundations will be required to deploy their grants promptly. In all, I estimate that it will take 12 to 15 years for the entirety of the Berkshire shares I hold at my death to move into the market

• Frequently, the possession of one such directorship bestows on its holder three to four times the annual median income of U.S. households. (I missed much of this gravy train: As a director of Portland Gas Light in the early 1960s, I received $100 annually for my service. To earn this princely sum, I commuted to Maine four times a year.)

• Is it any wonder that a non-wealthy director(”NWD”) now hopes — or even yearns — to be asked to join a second board, thereby vaulting into the $500,000-$600,000 class? To achieve this goal, the NWD will need help. The CEO of company searching for board members will almost certainly check with the NWD’s current CEO as to whether the NWD is a ‘good’ director. ‘Good’, of course, is a code word. If the NWD has seriously challenged his/her present CEO’s compensation or acquisition dreams, his or her candidacy will silently die. When seeking directors, CEOs don’t look for pit bulls. It’s the cocker spaniel that gets taken home

• Despite the illogic of it all, the director for whom fees are important – indeed, craved – is almost universally classified as “independent” while many directors possessing fortunes very substantially linked to the welfare of the corporation are deemed lacking in independence. Not long ago, I looked at the proxy material of a large American company and found that eight directors had never purchased a share of the company’s stock using their own money. (They, of course, had received grants of stock as a supplement to their generous cash compensation.) This particular company had long been a laggard, but the directors were doing wonderfully.
  
  Paid-with-my-own-money ownership, of course, does not create wisdom or ensure business smarts. Nevertheless, I feel better when directors of our portfolio companies have had the experience of purchasing shares with their savings, rather than simply having been the recipients of grants.

• We are all duds at one thing or another. For most of us, the list is long. The important point to recognize is that if you are Bobby Fischer, you must play only chess for money

• At Berkshire, we will continue to look for business-savvy directors who are owner-oriented and arrive with a strong specific interest in our company. Thoughts and principles, not robot-like ‘processes’, will guide their actions. In representing your interests, they will, of course, seek managers whose goals include delighting their customers, cherishing their associates and acting as good citizens of both their communities and our country. Those objectives are not new. They were the goals of able CEOs sixty years ago and remain so. Who would have it otherwise?

And there’s other aspects of this in my life that I’ve slowly shifted my views on – such as the role of Luck and hard-work in success – that I now think of this concept as Goggins’s Razor.

I think there is a lot of benefit to be had in believing Goggins’s message on the surface and that is all that really matters. Can I think my way into being an ultramarathoner? Probably not[1]. Can I do my best to push myself beyond whatever limits I’ve self-imposed on myself? Absolutely. If believing Goggins’s message can get you off the couch and running 5 miles a day then I say go for it.

In some ways Goggins’s Razor is just Pascal’s Wager defined in a secular manner. That might be fair, but I tend to think of Pascal’s Wager as more of a framing for asymmetric bets, where Goggins’s Razor might be more a way to influence one’s attitude or interpret life.

Like any good maxim or heuristic there are obvious dangers if you take it to its logical extreme. But taking it on its surface has its benefits. Don’t go crazy applying this to every conspiracy or whatever pseudo-science drivel you might come across on social media.

Confucius got it right a long time ago: “The Man who says he can, and the man who says he can not.. Are both correct”

One thing I did not appreciate was just how much re-writing this process would take. We ended up applying to a journal with a pretty strict word and citation limit so much of the paper’s content had to be streamlined. I think there is a lot to be excited about in seeing how technology can be used to change the landscape of care.

If anyone wants to view the article, it can be found here

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Incredible book. Something I think everyone can benefit from reading. Whether or not you have experiences with Depression, Anxiety, etc. there are many ways in which you can benefit from being more in-tune with what your body is telling you. Listen to it.

The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, George Spafford, Kevin Behr

A fiction book that is supposed to be teaching you DevOps. If you care enough about learning DevOps to read this just skip right to the DevOps Handbook.

Mickey7 by Edward Ashton

Super interesting premise, but kinda disappointing. Felt like the author toed the line between comedy and philosophic, but neither aspect of that worked for me. The most interesting part of the book was a 5 page background on a character who never actually appears.

South of Broad by Patrick Conroy

Enjoyable. I liked the way the author wrote. No other notes.

Percy Jackson Series and Others by Rick Riordan

Re-read the original Percy Jackson books as well as the Heroes of Olympus stories. You could make an argument these are the most important books I’ve ever read because of how much they soldified my love for reading. I also read the follow-up Trials of Apollo for the first time, which I did not like. Hard to tell if they sucked or I just am an adult reading a YA novel without any nostalgia-colored glasses on. Also, the ending of Blood of Olympus kinda sucks for how good the rest of that series is.

The Pragmatic Programmer by David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

Had some takeaways, the main one being I wish I read this 2 or 3 years ago.

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

At the time of reading this, I felt this book was speaking directly to me. I still have a fond memory of it, but I don’t think I really integrated any of its lessons into my life. I need to revisit some of my notes or something because I def feel like this book had valuable lessons.

Richard Feynman: A Life in Science by John and Mary Gribben

Some interesting anecdotes. Some of the book gets super technical, and I ended up skipping some of those sections. I liked Surely You’re Joking more

The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

I have no idea how I ended up owning this book. I know I ordered it but I’m not sure where I heard of this. It was fine, but I don’t know how this more academic/religious view is supposed to help at all.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

This is the second Larson book I’ve read, and I still really like his novelistic non-fiction style. Learning more about pre-WWII Nazi Germany was interesting, but I think the main figure of William Dodd is what really made me like this.

Means of Ascent by Robert Caro

This is the first book in the Years of LBJ series that I've read, which if you're not familiar is one of the most renowned, fascinating biographies of our times. For the first 100-150 pages this was just a regular biography to me. It wasn't until the introduction of Coke Stevenson did this become something special. I could re-read the last chapters about Coke over and over again.

I will finish all the LBJ books one day, right now I'm going through Master of the Senate

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

It was good. Similar beats to The Martian, which I liked a lot more.

The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant

Admittedly, I have not done much research on this book after reading it. But it seemed to me to follow a certain formula. Present a certain view on X, then present a counter-view. Super interesting. The introduction was my favorite part

Amoralman by Derek Delguadio

I read this book after it was mentioned at work. I really enjoyed the show(performance?) the author has on Hulu titled

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Another book I’d put firmly in the “Everyone should read this” pile.

The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I’m love a good aphorism. Don’t overanalyze them.

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

My first forray into Hemingway -- if you don't count me scanning the Old Man and the Sea when I was 10 becaused I liked marlins. Not really sure what I think about this one. The Lost Generation is interesting, but not that interesting to me

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Enjoyed this but realized afterwards I read the abridged version. Apparently that was a mistake, I’ll revisit the full thing in like a decade.

Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Randomly picked this backup after reading the first 60ish pages about 2 years ago. It was much more engaging this time around. I’m a bit of a sucker for Taleb. He’s probably a bit too dismissive of other people’s ideas for my liking, but I think some of the way he thinks about things can be very insightful

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

East of Eden might be my favorite book, so I was excited to read this. It's good, but it is a different type of book. It's a great window into the post-Depression era. I can also understand why certain groups would've wanted this book banned at the time.

Red Notice by Bill Browder

Meh. Interesting story I guess. Not sure I took much a way from it other than a suspicion that the author is a narcissist

Needful Things by Stephen King

First time reading a Stephen King book. I enjoyed this. Weirdly, there’s a Rick and Morty episode that kind of spoiled this a bit for me. Will read more King in the future.

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

Really good. A collection of essays from the Dear Sugar internet column. Some of them we’re very good, and gave me a lot to think about it

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

This book had been on my list for a little while now. Reducing my technology use but continuing to use technology in the right way is very important to me, which is why I wrote

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

I cannot believe this book was written in 1985. For the rest of my life whenever 1984 is brought up I will reference Postman’s argument of how it’s actually Huxley’s Brave New World we should be concerned about. Everyone should read this book, however I will say at times it gets pretty in the weeds from a philosophy standpoint which most people might not like.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King

I liked this, at some point I’ll read the rest of the series, but not sure when.

How Will You Measure Your Life

One of the best of the year. I think the framing of how overachievers can suddenly find themselves unhappy is effective. Many gems in here on how one can structure their life, my favorite: Don’t look for a life partner who will make you happy. Look for someone

World War Z by Max Brooks

Much different than the movie. Interesting narrative structure. Other than that, meh.

Poor Charlie’s Almanac

Most of my absorption of Munger’s ideas have been from secondary sources so it was a nice change of pace to consume them directly. I think the thing I liked most about this collection of essays is how often the same subject comes up. It signals to me the clarity of thought Charlie had. An unexpected development from reading this was I’ve started reading a bunch of Berkshire’s Shareholder Letters. Highly recommend.

Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

A very different collection of essays than the above. Some interesting content in here. Things I agreed with, things I disagreed with, and things I was apathetic towards. Klosterman’s assertiveness(arrogance) on each of his positions make this more compelling than it probably should’ve been

I’ve asked this for things like buying an insurance policy, cooking a new dish, doing some work around my house. Most of the time it doesn’t necessarily give me anything I don’t already know, but here and there I find it saved me.

I like this framing because of the disconfirmatory angle(finding things not to do), rather than a confirmatory one(asking it what you should do)

Writing SQL is a huge part of my job, and I’ve slowly developed a checklist for my debugging to help me step through my code in the most efficient way. Here are those steps that I try to run through:

You Know What They Say About Assuming

• My number one piece of advice is also the most nebulous. Check all the assumptions you might have. It’s just as probable that your understanding of a particular table is off than the SQL you’re writing is wrong. No assumption in this step is too trivial, take equal caution of each of them

Start with Where

• A huge proportion of problems arise from WHERE clauses. Manipulating different parts of this section is a good way to make sure that the results change in the way your expect them to.

• If you have multiple conditions – especially if both AND and OR are present – it can be very easy to lose sight of what the behavior is for each. Try changing ANDs and ORs back and forth as well as commenting out portions. You might be surprised to find the way in which that affects the results

One Row per What?

• An important question to ask yourself when you start joining in tables that have different granularities. Should the returned table be one row per user or can a user appear multiple times? When you start aggregating the data it is easy to lose sight of this detail.

Standardize you SQL

• If you are part of a larger team where it’s necessary for you to read someone else’s queries, having conventions for how you write will save you a huge chunk of time. Subqueries vs. CTEs? Will you use GROUP BY and ORDER BY shortcuts? Even the way you choose to space and format your query is something that your team should be on the same page about. Having these things figured out ahead of time is well worth the investment.

Null Comparisons

• Using comparison operators(>=, >, etc.) can have some unexpected results if your data is incomplete. For example, when using these operators on date fields it will filter out all records where the data field is null. Forgeting about something like that can greatly skew your results

Know Your Tables

• When inner joining tables make sure the relevant data is consistent in both tables.

• Some tables might have idiosyncrasies that aren’t obvious on the surface. For example, your Sales table might have a column for when payment failed. If you go to sum all Sales in that table, it could be important to remember to filter out all cases where payment failed

Triple Check

• Did you just find the hidden statistical relationship that is going to 10x your companies revenue? Probably not. Triple check and quadruple check each line in your code. Until you can properly explain each line it might be best to keep that Slack message to the CEO in the drafts.

Check the Graveyard

• When spot checking your data make sure to find out what the data isn’t showing. Just because the row count matches your number of registered users, doesn’t automatically mean you’re good to go. Are there any other parts of the query that might accidentally contribute to filtering out additional data

Use Count Distinct

• Unless you are specifically trying to count rows, you should be using a DISTINCT within your COUNT. It’s very easy to make a mistake that leads to overcounting

I have to admit that I’ve started to become a bit of a digital ascetic – at least an aspiring one. I feel like I have good reason, but one thing I’ve realized is I am not great at making my arguments. Hence my reason for trying to write this essay.

Being Heads Up

One thing I’ve realized is: I think I’m crafting my argument in the wrong direction. Rather than try to explain what I might get back with the added time if I were to reduce my screen time by some amount, I realize it might be better to try to start from the expression of my values and see where in that the optimal amount of social media use ends up.

I am becoming more and more sure that the single greatest use of my time is spending it engaging with the people I love. I use the word engaging very deliberately. There are different levels of engagement, and I’d argue that the higher up you go the more rewarding it is. But I think something that is crucial is allowing the natural ebbs and flows of a conversion to take place. Think of it like surfing and looking for the right wave to ride. You might try a few, but the whole time you’re waiting for the big one to arrive. And when it does you fully commit2.

Phones disrupt that. There’s a part of you that isn’t fully engaged. Rather than being in the ocean ready for the wave to appear, you’re standing on the shore. By the time you see the wave it’s too late to get out there, the moment has passed. Passively staring at a phone – not being engaged with those around you – suffocates any conversation before it can happen.

Active, not Passive

Another thing that is super important to me is spending time thinking. Usually this takes the form of reading. I love to spend time lost in a book, whether it be fiction or nonfiction. I love to learn and this is by far the best way I do it.

One thing that is tough for me to reconcile with is the ability for me to surface good content online. With so much information out there it is hard for me to completely turn my back on social media. I think the biggest thing that has helped me is trying to have a plan before I open my computer. Taking an active role in what I am doing, as opposed to just hopping onto Twitter and letting my brain be bombarded by whatever The Algorithm decides to throw at me.

There are certain people I make sure to check in with – people who write a lot or consistently share things I find worthwhile. I use an RSS feed as a way to have a more personally curated timeline.

The internet is definitely a double-edged sword, so finding ways to protect myself from being cut is important. Even if it means limiting some of the upside available to me. I try to take a Via Negativa approach. Ripping things out and seeing if I’m still getting what I want out of what’s left. So far I think it’s working, but I can probably find some more things to eliminate.

Two heuristics: When in doubt, opt for the long-form content. And be as active as possible in how you consume it

Why Do We Fall

I am very far from perfect in the scenarios I’ve laid out above. But that is who I hope to be. My sister often tells me I’m being self-righteous or dismissive of other people’s opinions(she’s right). I recognize my own faults but all too often I think I fail to extend the same consideration to others. The best excuse I can give myself is that I’m human. In East of Eden the concept of Timshel is discussed – the idea that humans can and will fail, but it’s in their efforts to overcome these fallibilities that makes us who we are3. I won’t ever be perfect in this venture but I can definitely try.

More and more I have found how easy it is to be sucked back into the world of Social Media. I can be diligent 95% of the time but if I falter one day then that next day becomes that much harder. The best solution I’ve found so far is to just have my phone on me as little as possible and to just keep stacking good days.4

My tool of choice has been Anaconda. Is it the best? I have no idea, but it’s what I’ve become most comfortable with. I’ve banged my head against the wall enough times that I have finally found some success with it2. So – because I’ve learned more than I would ever like to know about managing a python environment with Anaconda – I decided to write down some of that hard-won knowledge here.

Define Environments Using YAML

Defining a YAML file at the start of the project with all the dependencies you think you’ll need and using that to create a new conda environment has been the most useful thing I learned. This method helps to resolve all dependencies and conflicts in one fell swoop. I have an example file at the bottom of this page

A few things to be aware of, some packages are not supported by Conda, so these will need to be explicitly defined as a Pip install. There are other workarounds to get conda to build packages, but I have not tried these in the YAML step. The channels portion determines where in the environment packages are downloaded from, for the most part you can ignore this.

Command: conda env create -f <file_name.yml> -n

<env_name>Once you’ve registered your environment, use conda install <package_name> wherever possible. Sometimes you will have to use Pip which is fine. But be aware that once you do it breaks conda. Anaconda actually suggests to any do pip installs at the end, and that once you do that if you need to go back to using Conda install you should just recreate a new environment.

Create a New Conda Environment For Each Project

Creating a new conda environment for each project is worth it. An environment per project is probably overkill, but if you’re doing anything with PyTorch or TensorFlow, then I recommend it.

If you’re using Jupyter, you will want to register that environment, be sure to run the following command so that you’re Notebook can access that environment:

Command: python -m ipykernel install --user --name <env_name> --display-name "<display_name>"

YAML File Example

name: torch
channels:
  - pytorch-nightly
  - conda-forge
dependencies:
    - python=3.9
    - pip>=19.0
    - pytorch 
    - torchvision 
    - jupyter
    - scikit-learn
    - scipy
    - pandas
    - matplotlib
    - pillow
    - tqdm
    - requests
    - h5py
    - pyyaml
    - boto3
    - ipykernel
    - beautifulsoup4
    - transformers
    - datasets
    - gensim
    - numpy
    - pip:
        - bayesian-optimization
        - gym

From everything I’ve read python packaging is nowhere close to being solved and even the people who understand what is going on under the hood have trouble. So if you find yourself in python package hell, keep going. When in doubt I rip out the environment and start over.

Addendum

I wrote this before the python package manager, uv, was released. I highly encourage any reader who is interested to check it out if they are not already aware of it. It seems increasingly likely the awesome team over there will make all of the package problems a thing of the past

The reason for this post is that I enjoy nostalgia. The melancholy feelings it evokes within me when I think back on certain parts of my life fascinate me. Sometimes I even find myself fondly reflecting on points in my life I would most definitely not want to go back to. Selfishly, I want to experience more nostalgia. So I have tried to think of ways in which I can. I have been trying to think of ways to plant more seeds of nostalgia in my present so that I may reap them at some future date.

First I think it’s important to know what brings about these feelings in the first place. Nostalgia needs long periods of the same experience with obvious bookends. If I attempt to express this in a more scientific manner I might say, “repeatedly exposing yourself to the same stimulus so that you associate it with a period in your life”

Second, I think you need to know the different types of nostalgia. Only some of these are ripe for intentional cultivation, so I’ll limit my navel gazing to just these. The two types of nostalgia I think are easiest to focus on are Olfactory and Auditory. Both of these being related to two distinct senses make them easier to manipulate, and I’ll talk about each in turn.

Olfactory

This is nostalgia related to the sense of smell, which I tend to especially enjoy. Exposed to a burst of some scent, and suddenly you’re transported back to a time period 5,10, 15 years ago. It makes absolutely no sense, but it’s great. A common way I find myself experiencing this is through artificial smells like soaps, detergents, etc. Which has caused me to change the way in which I pick these items to use in my life. Now when I move or enter a new phase in my life, I swap these toiletries for something of a different, inexperienced-as-of-yet scent. I recognize the ridiculousness in this, but if all I need to do to score myself a few extra bouts of nostalgia 10 years from now is change my hand soap from Morning Dew to Lavender then put a flat brim on me and call me Rob Dyrdek.

Auditory

The way in which I approach this one is partially for nostalgia purposes, but also just about trying to experience different things so take this section with a grain of salt. For all intents and purposes there is an infinite amount of music out there. I won’t be able to find every song I would like, yet I still think there is merit in trying to listen to different things. Most of this philosophy is not dictated by nostalgia hunting, however I will say that I don’t want my Spotify Wrapped for the rest of my life to be rotating the same 300 songs. A function of those shifting tastes are pockets of time where certain bands or genres dominate – this lends itself to easily triggerable memories far off in the future.

To expand on this a bit further I’ll mention one type of music I’m not the biggest fan of: Country.

My exposure to Country thus far in my life has been generally limited to specific scenarios – Summer time, hanging out with friends and family. While I’m pretty lukewarm on the music itself, hearing country music tends to elicit those feelings of nostalgia that I can’t get enough of. Pretend that Country now became my most listened to genre where I listened to it year around. The edges on the pretty picture I’ve painted for myself might start to bleed when I think about country music. Rather than one huge fresco, I might instead have an exhibit of tinier paintings. That isn’t inherently bad, I think an argument could easily be made that it’s better – it’s just different than what I’m going for.

Bringing it All Together

Your ability to associate specific stimuli(olfactory, auditory, etc) with specific memories makes them easier to pluck from the past – regardless of whether you intend to or not. Essentially I am just looking to experience new things but do them in some sort of discrete, packaged way so that my brain can easily portion them out into easily digestible bits of nostalgia. I acknowledge the fact that I am fully overthinking this, but whatever I can do what I want it’s my website.

Over time as I’ve struggled with this same problem across many different domains or skills I’ve developed a mental framework for where I define my endpoint. I call it Nominal Mastery. I define it as being good enough at a particular skill to be considered reasonably better than the average person, but not necessarily being good enough at that skill to be compensated for it. Becoming a Nominal Master in as many things as possible is something that has become an important part of my life and it gives me the freedom to pursue a wide range of different hobbies while still rewarding me with a strong level of satisfaction for my efforts.

It might help to tell you what Nominal Mastery isn’t. It is not being an Intermediate, nor is it the Slope of Enlightenment that you’ll see on a Dunning-Kruger curve1. To me both of those are steps along a development curve where someone is trying to climb as high as they can get. Either of those classifications inherently signal that someone has more progress left to make. Nominal Mastery is the end goal. Another thing I wouldn’t use Nominal Mastery to describe is within someone’s career domain. This is why in my definition of Nominal Mastery was the fact that it’s a skill level in which you wouldn’t expect to be compensated for. I limit the use of Nominal Mastery as a goal for hobbies or side projects. For example, a few things I would consider myself a Nominal Master at are juggling and cooking.

The Outside View

The biggest part of Nominal Mastery is that it will help put whatever skill you’re learning into perspective. Rather than have your expectations shift as you learn more about a skill, Nominal Mastery helps to anchor them to a fixed point – The Outsider’s View. Make no mistake, just because I’m using an outsider’s eye to judge whether or not I’ve reached a certain level of proficiency, does not mean this concept relies on the validation of some faceless population. It’s more to say that there’s many things that look impressive on the surface to an outsider, but to an insider it’s trivial. Think of it like a magician doing card tricks. When you don’t know how the trick is done, you’re going to be impressed by it. The magician can feel good about the reactions they are receiving for their sleight of hand. But if the magician instead does their routine for a group of magicians, their tricks no longer garner the same reaction. The perceived skill level is dependent on the audience.

By using that Outsider’s View, we can allow ourselves to be satisfied with where we stand as we become more familiar with a certain domain. I will never be a chef in a Michelin star restaurant, but I can make a decent smashburger and reverse-sear a steak, so in the eyes of my roommate I’m a great chef. It’s not about what Gordon Ramsey will think of my skills, it’s about what the random people who I meet in my life will think.

Amateurism is Cool

Part of the reason I exclude skills related to one’s career or other passions from Nominal Mastery is due to the amount of commitment growing in those domains requires. As you spend more time on a skill it gets increasingly harder to improve2. Climbing up that hill of diminishing returns should only be reserved for those things in which you are most passionate. If I were to apply this strategy of just trying to be better than an Outsider in my career, I don’t think I would be very effective.

Another reason I exclude career-related skills or things you’re hoping to be compensated for from the definition of Nominal Mastery is because it can be very easy to fool yourself that you are of a higher skill range than you really are. Remember in this framework you are typically stopping before you learn about all the other subdomains within this skill. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said in his book Flow – a book you should definitely read – “the moment that amateurs lose sight of the score and use knowledge mainly to bolster their egos or to achieve a material advantage, then they become caricatures” I encourage you to read the full text to get the proper context, but the point I think he is trying to make is that rabid amateurism can be a very fulfilling vocation but once you start to think you’re better than you really are you forfeit any virtue you might gain from it.

There are millions of different topics out there to learn about, at the same time there is a finite number that you have time to learn. I believe in Nominal Mastery’s ability to help you find some additional satisfaction from the things you choose to fill your time with, but I recognize that it might not be for everyone. My take: Learn. Learn as much as you can. Nothing in this life is too trivial that it’s not worth spending some time with. Whether you decide to go as deep as possible in a few things or to touch on many things, is ultimately your decision. But if you find yourself not recognizing your own growth, give the Nominal Mastery framework a try.