Warren Buffett Quotes
Warren Buffett Quotes
Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful".
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
Our favourite holding period is forever.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
Two rules:
1. Preserve the principal
2. When in doubt see Rule #1
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1
It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
Value is what you get.
The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
Let us do or die.
We believe that according the name "investors" to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a "romantic".
Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
It's better to hang out with people better than you, ... Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.
I want to give my kids enough so that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.
You've been drafted into a war you didn't start, ... Focus on your customers and lead your people as though their lives depended on your success.
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.
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
I have no idea on timing. It's far easier to tell what will happen than when it will happen. I would say that what is going on in terms of trade policy is going to have very important consequences.
Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.
Only when you combine sound intellect with emotional discipline, you get rational behavior.
Perhaps there are other solutions that make more sense than mine, ... However, wishful thinking -- and its usual companion, thumb sucking -- is not among them.
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.
Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
Never invest in a business you cannot understand.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
the short term the market is a popularity contest; in the long term it is a weighing machine.
The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.
Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.
Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.
Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.
It is optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.
As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it.
The ability to say "no" is a tremendous advantage for an investor.
Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.
Lethargy, bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style.
An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.
Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own.
As a group, lemmings have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.
Turn-arounds seldom turn.
An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.
The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.
Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.
For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn’t work is when you start doing things that you don't understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.
Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.
We have tried occasionally to buy toads at bargain prices with results that have been chronicled in past reports. Clearly our kisses fell flat. We have done well with a couple of princes - but they were princes when purchased. At least our kisses didn't turn them into toads. And, finally, we have occasionally been quite successful in purchasing fractional interests in easily-identifiable princes at toad-like prices.
“I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out."- Oct. 2003 talking with Wharton MBA students.
"The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes."- Nov. 2002 talking with students at Gaston Hall.
There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do.
“When they open that envelope, the first instruction is to take my pulse again”. - 2001 Annual Meeting after mentioning that the instructions of his succession are sealed in an envelope at headquarters.
Berkshire’s arbitrage activities differ from those of many arbitrageurs. First, we participate in only a few, and usually very large, transactions each year. Most practitioners buy into a great many deals perhaps 50 or more per year. With that many irons in the fire, they must spend most of their time monitoring both the progress of deals and the market movements of the related stocks. This is not how Charlie nor I wish to spend our lives. (What’s the sense in getting rich just to stare at a ticker tape all day?)
In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.
Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart - and not too smart at that - only a very few times. Indeed, we'll now settle for one good idea a year. (Charlie says it's my turn.)
Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.
We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.
All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.
If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety..."
You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right—and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.
One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over... your problem won’t improve with age.
If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweller.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.
The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.
The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect... You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: "we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.”
You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. And if you can’t write an intelligent answer to those questions, don’t do it.
I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.
Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.
Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: `How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?' The answer: `Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg'.
The speed at which a business success is recognized, furthermore, is not that important as long as the company's intrinsic value is increasing at a satisfactory rate. In fact, delayed recognition can be an advantage: It may give us the chance to buy more of a good thing at a bargain price.
I am out of step with present conditions. When the game is no longer played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, and so on. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand ( although I find it difficult to apply ) even though it may mean foregoing large, and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don't fully understand, have not practiced successfully, and which possibly could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital.
Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish.
I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year. I get to do it with people I like, and I don't have to associate with anybody who causes my stomach to churn. I tap dance to work, and when I get there I think I'm supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling. It's tremendous fun.
Warren Buffett Quotes
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Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful".
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
Our favourite holding period is forever.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
Two rules:
1. Preserve the principal
2. When in doubt see Rule #1
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1
It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. [For] to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
Value is what you get.
The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
Let us do or die.
We believe that according the name "investors" to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a "romantic".
Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
It's better to hang out with people better than you, ... Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.
I want to give my kids enough so that they could feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.
You've been drafted into a war you didn't start, ... Focus on your customers and lead your people as though their lives depended on your success.
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.
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
I have no idea on timing. It's far easier to tell what will happen than when it will happen. I would say that what is going on in terms of trade policy is going to have very important consequences.
Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.
Only when you combine sound intellect with emotional discipline, you get rational behavior.
Perhaps there are other solutions that make more sense than mine, ... However, wishful thinking -- and its usual companion, thumb sucking -- is not among them.
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.
Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
Never invest in a business you cannot understand.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
the short term the market is a popularity contest; in the long term it is a weighing machine.
The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.
Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.
Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.
Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.
It is optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.
As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it.
The ability to say "no" is a tremendous advantage for an investor.
Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.
Lethargy, bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style.
An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.
Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own.
As a group, lemmings have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.
Turn-arounds seldom turn.
An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.
The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.
Can you really explain to a fish what it's like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.
For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn’t work is when you start doing things that you don't understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.
Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.
We have tried occasionally to buy toads at bargain prices with results that have been chronicled in past reports. Clearly our kisses fell flat. We have done well with a couple of princes - but they were princes when purchased. At least our kisses didn't turn them into toads. And, finally, we have occasionally been quite successful in purchasing fractional interests in easily-identifiable princes at toad-like prices.
“I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out."- Oct. 2003 talking with Wharton MBA students.
"The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes."- Nov. 2002 talking with students at Gaston Hall.
There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do.
“When they open that envelope, the first instruction is to take my pulse again”. - 2001 Annual Meeting after mentioning that the instructions of his succession are sealed in an envelope at headquarters.
Berkshire’s arbitrage activities differ from those of many arbitrageurs. First, we participate in only a few, and usually very large, transactions each year. Most practitioners buy into a great many deals perhaps 50 or more per year. With that many irons in the fire, they must spend most of their time monitoring both the progress of deals and the market movements of the related stocks. This is not how Charlie nor I wish to spend our lives. (What’s the sense in getting rich just to stare at a ticker tape all day?)
In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.
Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart - and not too smart at that - only a very few times. Indeed, we'll now settle for one good idea a year. (Charlie says it's my turn.)
Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.
We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.
All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.
If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety..."
You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right—and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.
One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over... your problem won’t improve with age.
If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweller.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.
The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.
The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect... You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: "we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.”
You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. And if you can’t write an intelligent answer to those questions, don’t do it.
I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.
Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.
Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: `How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?' The answer: `Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg'.
The speed at which a business success is recognized, furthermore, is not that important as long as the company's intrinsic value is increasing at a satisfactory rate. In fact, delayed recognition can be an advantage: It may give us the chance to buy more of a good thing at a bargain price.
I am out of step with present conditions. When the game is no longer played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, and so on. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand ( although I find it difficult to apply ) even though it may mean foregoing large, and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don't fully understand, have not practiced successfully, and which possibly could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital.
Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish.
I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year. I get to do it with people I like, and I don't have to associate with anybody who causes my stomach to churn. I tap dance to work, and when I get there I think I'm supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling. It's tremendous fun.
Warren Buffett Quotes
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 Berkshire Hathaway's 2006 Chairman's Letter
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 I’m a huge Warren Buffett fan and have been for as long as I can remember. |
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The Oracle of Omaha: Warren Buffett is Born
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 “I always knew I was going to be rich,” says Buffett. “I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.” |
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Lesson #3: Enjoy The Process
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Common Pitfalls in Buying a Business - Buyer Overpays
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Investor\'s Insight: How Buffett Created an Empire
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| “I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year,” says Buffett. “I tap dance to work, and when I get there, I think I’m supposed to lie on my back and paint the ceiling. It’s tremendous fun.” |
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