Top 100 Buffett Quotes
#1. Be fearful when there is greed and be greedy when there is fear.
Warren Buffett
#4. My only contact with the outside world was an RCA Victrola, and Elvis would sing, and then I'd dream about expensive cars.
Jimmy Buffett
#5. I'm living on things that excite me, be they pastry, or lobster, or love ...
Jimmy Buffett
#6. 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
#7. I think I could make you fifty percent a year on one million dollars. No, I know I could. I guarantee that.
Warren Buffett
#8. I'm always interested in understanding the math of things and understanding as much as I can about all aspects of business. And what I learn today may be useful to me two years from now. That'sreally the wonderful thing about investments is your knowledge is cumulative.
Warren Buffett
#9. If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.
Warren Buffett
#10. I think the worst mistake you can make in stocks is to buy or sell based on current headlines,
Warren Buffett
#11. Our leaders have asked for 'shared sacrifice.' But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
Warren Buffett
#12. Never be afraid to ask for too much when selling or offer too little when buying.
Warren Buffett
#14. Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You're going to do well at it.
Warren Buffett
#15. Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people.
Warren Buffett
#16. The banking business is no favorite of ours. When assets are twenty times equity - a common ratio in this industry - mistakes that involve only a small portion of assets can destroy a major portion of equity. And mistakes have been the rule rather than the exception at many major banks.
Warren Buffett
#17. Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Warren Buffett
#18. You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.
Warren Buffett
#19. Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.
Warren Buffett
#20. We are stronger than we think we are.
We have courage that we do not recognize until we need it.
We are equal to challenges that we haven't even imagined yet
Peter Buffett
#21. Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
Warren Buffett
#22. I have no idea on timing. It's 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.
Warren Buffett
#23. The gross profits in many workouts appear quite small. It's a little like looking for parking meters with some time left on them. However, the predictability coupled with a short holding period produces quite decent average annual rates of return after allowance for the occasional substantial loss.
Warren Buffett
#24. In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.
Warren Buffett
#25. I have always cautioned partners that I considered three years a minimum in determining whether we were "performing".
Warren Buffett
#28. Traditional wisdom is long on tradition and short on wisdom.
Warren Buffett
#29. The truth is, everything that has happened in my life ... that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better.
Warren Buffett
#30. I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.
Warren Buffett
#31. Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic, but I've had a good life all the way.
Jimmy Buffett
#32. Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can't do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time.
Ben Stein
#34. At age 19, I read a book [The Intelligent Investor] and what I'm doing today, at age 76, is running things through the same thought process I learned from the book I read at 19.
Warren Buffett
#35. You don't ever ask a barber whether you need a haircut.
Warren Buffett
#36. Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it's the lack of change that appeals to me. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like.
Warren Buffett
#37. You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.
Warren Buffett
#38. 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
#39. Some of it's magic and some of it's tragic but I had a good life all the way.
Jimmy Buffett
#40. I read annual reports of the company I'm looking at and I read the annual reports of the competitors - that is the main source of material.
Warren Buffett
#42. We set no volume goals in our insurance business generally - and certainly not in reinsurance - as virtually any volume can be achieved if profitability standards are ignored.
Warren Buffett
#43. People loved to see him come, and they were sad to see him go.
Jimmy Buffett
#44. Eliminating hunger in America is doable, because we have the resources to do it.
Howard Graham Buffett
#45. I can't fax you my love, I can't email my heart.
Jimmy Buffett
#47. Warren Buffett is fond of saying that any player unaware of the fool in the market probably is the fool in the market.
Michael Lewis
#48. The one piece of advice I can give you is, do what turns you on. Do something that if you had all the money in the world, you'd still be doing it. You've got to have a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.
Warren Buffett
#49. The only question is whether you're going to do it today or tomorrow. If you keep saying you're going to do it tomorrow,
you'll never do it. You have to get on it today.
Warren Buffett
#50. The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself ... The more you learn, the more you'll earn.
Warren Buffett
#51. I think it's terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor.
Howard Warren Buffett
#52. Problems in a company are like cockroaches in the kitchen. You will never find just one
Warren Buffett
#53. I would say that life at 84, I am having as much fun as I've ever had in my life. I mean I get to do what I love every day with the people I love-and it just doesn't get any better than that.
Warren Buffett
#55. The only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: 'I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love.' But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.
Warren Buffett
#56. We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.
Charlie Munger
#57. SUPPOSE that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. This is a good one, he says enthusiastically. I'm in it, and I think you should be, too.
Warren Buffett
#58. On traditional economic theory:
We do not play chess as if we were a grandmaster, invest as if we were Warren Buffett, or cook like an Iron Chef. It is more likely we cook like Warren Buffett, who loves to eat at Dairy Queen.
Richard H. Thaler
#59. 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
#60. If I subscribed to the efficient market theory I would still be delivering papers
Warren Buffett
#61. Every company that has an economist working for him has one employee too many.
Warren Buffett
#62. If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.
Warren Buffett
#63. Fund consultants like to require style boxes such as "long-short," "macro," "international equities." At Berkshire our only style box is "smart."
Warren Buffett
#64. I think Buffett is a better investor than me because he has a better eye toward what makes a great business. And when I find a great business I'm happy to buy it and hold it. Most businesses don't look so great to me.
Seth Klarman
#65. Oh, yesterdays are over my shoulder, So I can't look back for too long. There's just too much to see waiting in front of me, and I know that I just can't go wrong.
Jimmy Buffett
#66. When I take a look at a company's annual report, if I don't understand it, they don't want me to understand it.
Warren Buffett
#68. Therapy is extremely expensive. Popping bubble wrap is radically cheap.
Jimmy Buffett
#69. John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don't try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.
Warren Buffett
#70. Asset-heavy businesses generally earn low rates of return - rates that often barely provide enough capital to fund the inflationary needs of the existing business, with nothing left over for real growth, for distribution to owners, or for acquisition of new businesses
Warren Buffett
#71. Any manual labor I've done was purely by mistake.
Jimmy Buffett
#72. Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable.
Warren Buffett
#73. I'd rather die while I'm living then live while I'm dead.
Jimmy Buffett
#74. We've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It's more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II.
Warren Buffett
#75. It is better to point out your own mistakes than have somebody else do it.
Warren Buffett
#76. The greater the potential for reward in the value portfolio, the less risk there is.
Warren Buffett
#77. Right at the core, the mainstream has it backwards. Warren Buffett often quips that the first rule of investing is to not lose money, and the second rule is to not forget the first rule. Yet few investors approach the world with such a strict standard of risk avoidance.
Seth Klarman
#78. People always should know better. People don't get - they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed.
Warren Buffett
#79. 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 - 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.
Warren Buffett
#80. 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
#81. I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit.
Warren Buffett
#82. an unvaryingly strong liquid position and avoidance of money-market borrowings;
Warren Buffett
#83. Good big decisions do not take time at all, if they do you are in trouble.
Warren Buffett
#84. I don't really think that, as a society, we [americans] want to confer blessings on generation after generation who contribute nothing to society, simply because somebody in the far distant past happened to amass a great sum of wealth.
Warren Buffett
#85. Soil is a living ecosystem, and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil.
Howard Warren Buffett
#86. I know a girl made of memories and phrases, lives her whole life in chapters and phases ...
Jimmy Buffett
#87. If you're in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.
Warren Buffett
#88. I've often felt there might be more to be gained by studying business failures than business successes.
Warren Buffett
#89. To win, the first thing you have to do is not lose.
Warren Buffett
#90. We will only do with your money what we would do with our own.
Warren Buffett
#91. A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling.
Warren Buffett
#92. It's a lot easier to buy things than it is to sell them.
Warren Buffett
#93. In economics, you always want to ask 'And then what?'
Warren Buffett
#94. Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future.
Warren Buffett
#95. Warren Buffett chuckled and said to me "I hope it's not my bad habits" Good Habits once established are just as hard to break as bad habits and bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow. So what are you going to do about it?
Lucas Remmerswaal
#97. Is it ignorance or apathy, I forget the lessons taught to me.
Jimmy Buffett
#99. Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.
Warren Buffett
#100. Continually challenge and be willing to amend your best loved ideas.
Warren Buffett
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
