Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
– Warren Buffet
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
– Warren Buffet
If you’re doing something you love, you’re more likely to put your all into it, and that generally
equates to making money.
– Warren Buffett
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
– Warren Buffett
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from
those who take the subway.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
– Warren Buffett
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
– Warren Buffett
If it’s too good be true, it usually is.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
– Warren Buffett
Never invest in a business you can’t understand.
– Warren Buffett
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist
on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are
greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
– Warren Buffett
Stay away from leverage. A long, long time ago a friend said to me about leverage, “If you’re
smart you don’t need it. If you’re dumb you got no business using it.”
– Warren Buffett
I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents
an enormous number of claim checks on society. It is like I have these little pieces of paper
that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but
paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of
the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS
research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim
checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those
claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.
– Warren Buffett
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many
things wrong.
– Warren Buffett
If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I’d be fully invested. Anyone
who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of
return I’ve ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers.
But I was investing peanuts then. It’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of
money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee
that.
– Warren Buffett
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
My ideal partnership is where I don’t have to do the work.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
– Warren Buffett
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things
difficult.
– Warren Buffett
Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use
that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a
tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not
particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner.
– Warren Buffett
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
– Warren Buffett
Invest in knowledge. Not necessarily education, although education can help, but knowledge.
You get knowledge from everything, but most of all from experience, from trying things.
Business assets fluctuate. Currency values fluctuate. The value of diplomas and degrees will
change in time. But knowledge stays with you forever. It’s impossible to have too much
knowledge or experience. I’m 83 and still using things I learned 65 years ago.
– Warren Buffet
I was hardwired at birth to allocate capital.
– Warren Buffet
I’ll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It’s
addictive. And there’s a fantastic brand loyalty.
– Warren Buffett
The business schools reward difficult, complex behavior more than simple behavior, but
simple behavior is more effective.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a
mediocre sale gives good results.
– Warren Buffett
Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
– Warren Buffett
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that,
you’ll do things differently.
– Warren Buffett
Our favorite holding period is forever.
– Warren Buffett
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
– Warren Buffett
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.
– Warren Buffett
Always look at how much the other guy is making when he is trying to sell you something.
– Warren Buffett
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful
price.
– Warren Buffett
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the
business.
– Warren Buffett
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others
are fearful.
– Warren Buffett
Some material things make my life more enjoyable; many, however, would not. I like having
an expensive private plane, but owning a half-dozen homes would be a burden. Too often, a
vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside
from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.
– Warren Buffett
Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves
your own talents. Nobody can take that away from you.
– Warren Buffett
I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars; I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
– Warren Buffett
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
– Warren Buffett
I’ve made plenty of mistakes in the United States in the last 60 years in looking at businesses.
And sometimes I’ve misread the future about those businesses. And when I misread the future,
we’re gonna lose money. And that’s happened to me various times and it’ll happen to me again
in the future.
So that – that’s the big danger in any investment is that you look at the company now and
you get surprised about how the future of that company develops. I’ve made an investment
15 years ago in a shoe company in the United States. It went to zero. That was my mistake
and that will happen to me again. I hope it doesn’t happen too often. But that exists no
matter where I make the investment. I try to analyze as carefully as I can; the competitive
position of the business, the durability of what they do, the quality of the management, all
that, and sometimes I make mistakes. If I make 20 investments I’m gonna make a couple of
mistakes. They may be in the United States, they may be in India, who knows.
– Warren Buffett
In the business world, the rear view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
– Warren Buffett
Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10
years.
– Warren Buffett
If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think
about the other 99 per cent.
– Warren Buffett
I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because
sooner or later, one will.
– Warren Buffett
You never wanna owe moey you can’t pay. I’m basically against debt. I think the average
individual will live a lot happier in life if they avoid… they surely ought to avoid credit card
debt. There’s no reason in the world to pay 18% for my… I can’t make money paying 18% for
money.
– Warren Buffett
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
– Warren Buffett
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather
than participate in it.
– Warren Buffett