Top 100 Buffett's Quotes
#1. Buffett's genius was largely a genius of character - of patience, discipline, and rationality.
Roger Lowenstein
#2. I think the foundation at Berkshire [Buffett's stake in Berkshirewill pass to the Buffett Foundation upon his death] will be a plus because there will be a continuation of the culture. We'd still take in fine businesses run by people who love them.
Charlie Munger
#3. I've adopted the guideline of Warren Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger, who says I wanna know where I'll be when I die - so I never go there.
Tom Brokaw
#4. I love reading Warren Buffett's letters, and I love contrasting his words with his actions. He's a very wise guy.
Daniel S. Loeb
#5. Actually, I bought one share of Warren Buffett's stock, probably 35 years ago, in order to read his letters.
Sam Wyly
#6. President Obama likes to talk about the Buffett Rule. Well, here's a Buffett Rule that all Americans should be able to support: mom and pop businesses should not pay a higher tax rate than Fortune 500 corporations like Warren Buffett's.
Rob Portman
#7. Warren Buffett's company reportedly owes the IRS a billion dollars in back taxes. When he said he wasn't paying enough taxes, he wasn't kidding.
Jay Leno
#8. I don't think Warren Buffett should be the treasurer or whatever. Warren Buffett's nuts! Just because he's a freaking billionaire doesn't mean he has common sense.
Stephen Baldwin
#9. Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Warren Buffett
#10. Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
Warren Buffett
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic, but I've had a good life all the way.
Jimmy Buffett
#14. 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
#15. You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.
Warren Buffett
#16. Some of it's magic and some of it's tragic but I had a good life all the way.
Jimmy Buffett
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling.
Warren Buffett
#27. It's a lot easier to buy things than it is to sell them.
Warren Buffett
#28. 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
#29. I want our pie to grow all the people, but if some other guy's pie is growing a little faster, that's terrific.
Howard Warren Buffett
#30. You've been acting like Jesus owes you a favor, but he's a little smart for you to fool.
Jimmy Buffett
#31. I prefer liquor store robbers with hungry kids to companies that locate offshore to avoid U.S. taxes.
Warren Buffett
#32. When you get to my age, you'll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That's the ultimate test of how you've lived your life.
Warren Buffett
#33. We have a terrific economy, it's like a great athlete that's had a cardiac arrest.
Howard Warren Buffett
#34. 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.
Warren Buffett
#35. Being rich and famous seems to have its ups and downs. That's the price you pay for being troubadours and clowns.
Jimmy Buffett
#36. 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
#37. Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.
Warren Buffett
#38. Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
Warren Buffett
#39. In fact, when Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, "Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.
Warren Buffett
#40. There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.
Warren Buffett
#41. If there's a heaven for me, I'm sure it has a beach attached.
Jimmy Buffett
#42. 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
#43. If you want your business to survive for 100 years, you've got to make it through every single day for 100 years. It's not enough to do it 99.9% of the time.
Warren Buffett
#44. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career, and he replied that he wanted to go into a particular field, but thought he should work for McKinsey for a few years first to add to his resume. To me that's like saving sex for your old age. It makes no sense.
Warren Buffett
#45. It's been wonderful for me, and I feel so privileged to have fans that are that loyal.
Jimmy Buffett
#46. It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.
Warren Buffett
#47. If the reason for doing something is that everyone else is doing it, it's not a good enough reason.
Warren Buffett
#48. She said 'a tattoo is a badge of validation'.
But the truth of the matter is far more revealing.
It's a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling.
Jimmy Buffett
#49. Buffett and Munger joke that envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that isn't any fun. "Envy is crazy," remarks Munger. "It's 100 percent destructive. . . . If you get those things out of your life early, life works a lot better.
Guy Spier
#50. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.
Warren Buffett
#51. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits.
Warren Buffett
#52. My head hurts, my feet stink, and I don't love Jesus. It's that kind of morning.
Jimmy Buffett
#53. I have a house that I bought 55 years ago. It's warm in the winter; it's cool in the summer. It has everything I wanted, plus it has all kinds of good memories. Like my kids, I have good thoughts about that. I can't imagine living any better.
Warren Buffett
#54. Mr. Market is kind of a drunken psycho. Some days he gets very enthused, some days he gets very depressed. And when he get really enthused you sell to him, and if he gets depressed, you buy from him. There's no moral taint attached to that.
Warren Buffett
#55. And there's that one particular harbor
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within ...
Jimmy Buffett
#56. It's us fun being a gorse when the tractor comes along, or the blacksmith when the car comes along.
Warren Buffett
#57. We're wanted men, we'll strike again, but first let's have a beer.
Jimmy Buffett
#58. Life is a journey that's measured not in miles or years but in experiences, and the route your life takes is built not of roads but of songs.
Jimmy Buffett
#59. The latter qualification brings to mind a fellow who applied for a job and stated he had twenty years of experience-which was corrected by a former employer to read one year's experience-twenty times.
Warren Buffett
#60. It's not that I want money. It's the fun of making money and watching it grow.
Warren Buffett
#61. I bought a company in the mid-'90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I've made lots of dumb decisions. That's part of the game.
Warren Buffett
#62. I make plenty of mistakes and I'll make plenty more mistakes, too. That's part of the game. You've just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.
Warren Buffett
#63. 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
#64. It's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Jimmy Buffett
#65. Nothing to show but this brand new tattoo. But it's a real beauty, a Mexican cutie, how it got here I haven't a clue.
Jimmy Buffett
#66. Nebraska was home to indigenous peoples for centuries. It became a state in 1867, and has produced an important literary figure, Willa Cather, as well as an investor said to be the world's second richest man, Warren Buffett.
Stephen Kinzer
#67. Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
Warren Buffett
#68. Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we're trying to do. It's imperfect, but that's what it's all about.
Warren Buffett
#69. If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.
Warren Buffett
#70. I think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it's made by Warren Buffett.
Bill Gates
#71. The value of a business is the cash it's going to produce in the future.
Warren Buffett
#72. You can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is and he's doing these things and he's getting rich.
Warren Buffett
#73. Well, I think the biggest mistake is not learning the habits of saving properly early. Because saving is a habit. And then, trying to get rich quick. It's pretty easy to get well-to-do slowly. But it's not easy to get rich quick.
Warren Buffett
#74. We try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That's all I'm trying to do.
Warren Buffett
#75. Would you rather be the world's greatest lover, but have everyone think you're the world's worst lover? Or would you rather be the world's worst lover but have everyone think you're the world's greatest lover? Now, that's an interesting question.
Warren Buffett
#76. The American worker is more productive than he's ever been. We've got more people to do it. We've got all the ingredients for a sensational future. It's just that right now the athlete's on the floor. This is a super athlete.
Howard Warren Buffett
#77. Maybe it's all too simple for the big brains to figure it out.
What if the hokey-pokey is really what it's all about?
Jimmy Buffett
#78. The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.
Warren Buffett
#79. You could have these crazy Internet valuations in the late 1990s, but they prove themselves out in the market. The next day they were selling for more than they were the day before, and people said, you know, you're crazy if you don't get in on this. So it's very human.
Howard Warren Buffett
#80. When Warren Buffett says the sun shines out of somebody's backside, it's worth paying attention.
Guy Spier
#81. To describe my scarce leisure time in today's terms, I always default to reading.
Jimmy Buffett
#82. It's better to build than to buy if you can find the right people.
Warren Buffett
#83. 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
#84. Mistakes are very seldom permanent, most of them can be fixed with less difficulty and drama than one imagines, and there's nothing shameful about them. There is, however, something sad and limiting about the fear of making them.
Peter Buffett
#85. In some ways, it's easier to settle for someone else's version of success than to risk falling short at one's own.
Peter Buffett
#86. 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
#87. The U.S. Treasury has got borrowing costs like nobody else has. They can borrow basically unlimited amounts. They can stay there for years and years. These assets will be worth more money over time.
Howard Warren Buffett
#88. Like most trends, at the beginning it's driven by fundamentals, at some point speculation takes over. What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.
Warren Buffett
#89. It's a big mistake to try and mislead people. They will turn around.
Warren Buffett
#90. People love leverage when it's working. I mean, it's so easy to borrow money from a guy at X and put it out at X.
Howard Warren Buffett
#91. You've got a global food problem. You've got a food problem in the United States. You've got a food problem in Africa ... in Asia. And so the truth is, the U.S. is going to have to produce more, on not very many more acres, honestly. And so we're going to have to do a better job.
Howard Graham Buffett
#92. It's my job to be better than the rest, and that's enough reason to go for me. It's my job to be better than the rest, and that makes the day for me.
Jimmy Buffett
#93. I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they're going to look like in ten to fifteen years time. Take Wrigley's chewing gum. I don't think the internet is going to change how people chew gum.
Warren Buffett
#94. If I knew where I was going to want to live the next five or 10 years I would buy a home and I'd finance it with a 30-year mortgage ... It's a terrific deal.
Warren Buffett
#95. Where's the church, who took the steeple, Religion's in the hands of some crazy ass people, Television preachers with bad hair and dimples, The God's honest truth is, it's not that simple
Jimmy Buffett
#96. Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.
Warren Buffett
#97. You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O.K.
Warren Buffett
#98. 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
#99. Buffett also teaches investors that there is one important caveat to the multiyear test: Underperformance in the late stages of a speculative bull market is highly likely. It's a caveat that he repeats to this day. We
Jeremy Miller
#100. It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
Warren Buffett
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