Top 100 Warren Buffett Quotes
#1. The truth is that I've got all my net worth safely in Berkshire and I will never sell a share so there is no one more concerned about what happens after my death than I am.
Warren Buffett
#2. In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.
Warren Buffett
#3. I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.
Warren Buffett
#4. Personally, I really hope I can treat everyone equally. I think I have done a pretty good job so far but I know I can do it better.
Warren Buffett
#5. If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.
Warren Buffett
#6. Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.
Warren Buffett
#7. Good big decisions do not take time at all, if they do you are in trouble.
Warren Buffett
#8. A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling.
Warren Buffett
#9. You'd get very rich if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. You'd resist the temptation to dabble. You'd make more good decisions and you'd make more big decisions.
Warren Buffett
#10. Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.
Warren Buffett
#11. An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.
Warren Buffett
#12. Confidence in markets and in institutions, it's a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don't even think about it. It's indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it's gone for five minutes, it's the only thing to think about.
Warren Buffett
#13. The greatest Enemies of the Equity investor are Expenses and Emotions.
Warren Buffett
#14. Derivatives are like sex. It's not who we're sleeping with, it's who they're sleeping with that's the problem.
Warren Buffett
#15. Possessing a powerful worldwide brand is essential for sustained success.
Warren Buffett
#16. Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.
Warren Buffett
#17. During inflation, Goodwill is the gift that keeps on giving.
Warren Buffett
#18. In the end we must have people to match our principles, not the reverse.
Warren Buffett
#19. The smartest side to take in a bidding war is the losing side.
Warren Buffett
#20. Look for 3 things in a person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity.
If they don't have the last one, don't even bother with the first two.
Warren Buffett
#21. Learning how to live is much more important than learning how to make a living.
Warren Buffett
#22. The active investors will have their returns diminished by a far greater percentage than will their inactive brethren. That means that the passive group - the "know-nothings" - must win.
Warren Buffett
#23. An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.
Warren Buffett
#24. I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
Warren Buffett
#25. It's not that I want money. It's the fun of making money and watching it grow.
Warren Buffett
#26. 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.
Warren Buffett
#27. Managers that always promise to 'make the numbers' will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.
Warren Buffett
#28. I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
Warren Buffett
#29. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.
Warren Buffett
#30. It is impossible to unsign a contract, so do all your thinking before you sign.
Warren Buffett
#31. If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.
Warren Buffett
#33. If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires.
Warren Buffett
#35. Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
Warren Buffett
#36. Money will not change how healthy you are or how many people love you.
Warren Buffett
#37. I tell college students, when you get to be my age you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you.
Warren Buffett
#38. It irritates the hell out of me but you can't buy love.
Warren Buffett
#39. It's better to build than to buy if you can find the right people.
Warren Buffett
#40. From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won't do; it's mindboggling screw-ups that are required.
Warren Buffett
#41. In my opinion, the entire field of investment management, involving hundreds of billions of dollars, would be more satisfactorily conducted if everyone had a good yardstick for measurement of ability and sensibly applied it.
Warren Buffett
#42. You know ... you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.
Warren Buffett
#43. Asset values and earning power are the dominant factors affecting the valuation of a controlling interest in a business. Market price, which governs valuation of minority interest positions, is of little or no importance in valuing a controlling interest.
Warren Buffett
#44. 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.
Warren Buffett
#45. A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth.
Warren Buffett
#46. You could be somewhere where the mail was delayed three weeks and do just fine investing.
Warren Buffett
#47. What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.
Warren Buffett
#48. We're perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff.
Warren Buffett
#49. Things you like to do should be a hobby of yours, but things the world does should be a business of yours.
Warren Buffett
#50. In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard.
Warren Buffett
#51. It's just that I landed up in a terrific capitalist system. One that pays people who allocate capital extraordinarily well. Intrinsically, I'm not worth as much as somebody who invents something that could improves people's life, or health or whatever.
Warren Buffett
#52. Invest in as much of yourself as you can, you are your own biggest asset by far.
Warren Buffett
#53. Either they're trying to con you or they're trying to con themselves.
Warren Buffett
#55. 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
#56. If you want to shoot rare, fast-moving elephants, you should always carry a loaded gun.
Warren Buffett
#57. In an inflationary world, a toll bridge (like company) would be a great thing to own because you've laid out the capital costs. You built it in old dollars and you don't have to keep replacing it.
Warren Buffett
#58. If you have a great manager, you want to pay him very well.
Warren Buffett
#59. If the world couldn't see your results, would you rather be thought of as the world's greatest investor but in reality have the world's worst record? Or be thought of as the world's worst investor when you were actually the best?
Warren Buffett
#60. Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on.
Warren Buffett
#61. The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.
Warren Buffett
#62. Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. If you've got talents, no one can take them from you.
Warren Buffett
#63. Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required. Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are.
Warren Buffett
#64. Investment ideas, like women are often more exciting than punctual.
Warren Buffett
#65. Not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.
Warren Buffett
#66. I may have more money than you, but money doesn't make the difference. If
there is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you learn anything from me, this is the best advice I can give you.
Warren Buffett
#67. If we start deciding, based on guesses or emotions, whether we will or won't participate in a business where we should have some long run edge, we're in trouble.
Warren Buffett
#68. Stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth.
Warren Buffett
#69. I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge
Warren Buffett
#70. 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.
Warren Buffett
#71. You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.
Warren Buffett
#72. The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.
Warren Buffett
#73. Most business mistakes are irreversible setbacks, but you get another chance. There are two things in life that you don't get another chance at - marrying the wrong person and what you do with your children.
Warren Buffett
#74. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.
Warren Buffett
#75. Our experience with newly-minted MBAs has not been that great. Their academic records always look terrific and the candidates always know just what to say; but too often they are short on personal commitment to the company and general business savvy. It's difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.
Warren Buffett
#76. Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero.
Warren Buffett
#77. We will prosper or suffer in controlled investments in relation to the operating performances of our businesses - we will not attempt to profit by playing various games in the securities markets.
Warren Buffett
#78. If you invested in a very low cost index fund - where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.
Warren Buffett
#79. When Charlie and I finish reading the long footnotes detailing the derivatives activities of major banks, the only thing we understand is that we don't understand how much risk the institution is running.
Warren Buffett
#80. We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Warren Buffett
#81. As one of my older friends says, "Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be." Let's take a stab at it, anyway.
Warren Buffett
#82. If you gave me $100 billion and said take away the soft drink leadership of Coca-Cola in the world, I'd give it back to you and say it can't be done.
Warren Buffett
#83. Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.
Warren Buffett
#84. If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.
Warren Buffett
#85. Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.
Warren Buffett
#86. Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay.
Warren Buffett
#87. Having a large amount of leverage is like driving a car with a dagger on the steering wheel pointed at your heart. If you do that, you will be a better driver. There will be fewer accidents but when they happen, they will be fatal.
Warren Buffett
#88. I do not believe in inheriting your position in society based on which womb you come from ... I think a rich person should leave his children enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.
Warren Buffett
#89. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.
Warren Buffett
#90. 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
#91. It's almost impossible to overpay the truly extraordinary CEO ... but the species is rare.
Warren Buffett
#92. If horses had controlled investment decisions, there would have been no auto industry.
Warren Buffett
#93. An irresistable footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities - at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.
Warren Buffett
#94. I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.
Warren Buffett
#95. Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you'd be content to own it in the absence of any market.
Warren Buffett
#96. Sound investing can make you very wealthy if you're not in too big a hurry
Warren Buffett
#97. I'm happy when I can spend every day doing the things that I like to do. That's my luxury.
Warren Buffett
#98. The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble ... We want to buy them when they're on the operating table.
Warren Buffett
#99. A prediction about the direction of the stock market tells you nothing about where stocks are headed, but a whole lot about the person doing the predicting.
Warren Buffett
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