Moats Quotes

In business, I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable 'moats'.

Warren Buffett

Castles, Looks, Economic

Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.63, John Wiley & Sons

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I want a big house with a moat and dragons and a fort to keep people out.

Victoria Beckham

Dragons, People, House

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I live in a house that was built in 1480. It has a moat around it. It is like a little baby castle.

Bill Wyman

Girl, Baby, House

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To the question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other answer but this, Look to your Moat.

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax

Looks, Answers, World

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If I wish to engage, then the enemy, for all his high ramparts and deep moat, cannot avoid engagement; I attack that which he is obliged to rescue.

Sun Tzu

War, Enemy, Wish

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A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far.

Jon Meacham

Wall, People, May

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This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,--This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

William Shakespeare

Kings, Wall, War

'Richard II' (1595) act 2, sc. 1, l. 40

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No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats.

Warren Buffett

Crazy, Feet, Finance

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It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.

Martin Amis

Wall, Thinking, Glasses

"Time's Arrow". Book by Martin Amis, www.avclub.com. September 1991.

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How do you compete against a true fanatic? You can only try to build the best possible moat and continuously attempt to widen it.

Charlie Munger

Trying, Fanatics

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Long distances used to be a moat that both insulated and isolated people from workers on the other side of the world. But every day, technology narrows that moat inch by inch. Every person in the world is on the verge of becoming both a coworker and a competitor to every one of us ... Technological change is going to reach out and sooner or later change something fundamental in your business world.

Andy Grove

Distance, Technology, Technological Change

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the wealthy ... live in marble mausoleums surrounded by the suspicions and neuroses that have replaced the medieval moats which once isolated so-called aristocrats from reality.

Elsa Maxwell

Reality, Neurosis, Wealth

Elsa Maxwell (1954). “R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell's own story”

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I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions.

Tim Berners-Lee

People, Way, Built

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Since social relationships are always ambiguous, since my thought is only a unit, since my thoughts create rifts as much as they unite, since my words establish contacts by being spoken and create isolation by remaining unspoken, since an immense moat separates the subjective certitude that I have for myself from the objective reality that I represent to others, since I never stop finding myself guilty even though I feel I am innocent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Reality, Rift, Isolation

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If you want to get to the castle, Groceries, you've got to swim the moat.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Swim, Castles, Want

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You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933... Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns.

Charles Krauthammer

Wall, Lying, Germany

"Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics". Book by Charles Krauthammer, 2013).

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Kellogg's and Campbell's moats have also shrunk due to the increased buying power of supermarkets and companies like Wal-Mart. The muscle power of Wal-Mart and Costco has increased dramatically.

Charlie Munger

Buying, Muscles, Company

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Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decreptitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks.

John Burnham Schwartz

Ducks, White, Water

John Burnham Schwartz (2009). “The Commoner”, p.148, Vintage

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Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water
lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer
upon them; let a boat be kept there.

Denise Levertov

Dark, Space, Water

Denise Levertov (1967). “The Sorrow Dance: Poems”, [New York] : New Directions

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You dwell in whitened castles with deep and poisoned moats and cannot hear the curses which fill your children's throats.

Maya Angelou

Children, Castles, Curse

Maya Angelou (2011). “I Shall Not Be Moved: Poems”, p.21, Random House

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An invitation to be a bridesmaid is an honor which cannot be declined without some very good reason. Our idea of one of the better reasons is the impending arrival of a little stranger. ... any lady in this interesting condition should have the grace to refuse. We know that symbols of fertility are appropriate to the marriage ceremony, but they needn't be quite so obviously borne in on the congregation.

Alice-Leone Moats

Should Have, Ideas, Interesting

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Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is moat thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy boat among miners; and so with everything else.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Country, Teacher, Teaching

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I don't buy into that whole concept of success that I have this mountain with this moat around it and then I get into my big car and drive to my destination and never see people. That's not my concept of success.

Lauryn Hill

People, Car, Mountain

"Queen of Hip Hop". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 18, 2000.

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She looked around. "Oh, I've just got to hug somebody! You!" And she hugged Puck, the little ghost horse. "And you." She hugged Pook, and Peek, and even the nose of the moat monster. "But not you," she decided, encountering the zombie.

Piers Anthony

Horse, Zombie, Hug

Piers Anthony (1985). “Crewel lye: a caustic yarn”, Del Rey

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Mirth is a Proteus, changing its shape and manner with the thousand diversities of individual character, from the most superfluous gayety to the deepest, moat earnest humor.

Edwin Percy Whipple

Character, Diversity, Shapes

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