Warren Buffett

“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. The person sitting in the shade now should be grateful for the person who planted and tended that tree. That includes all those benefactors of humanity throughout history that created, invented, financed, produced, maintained and improved all that we enjoy today.”

“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.”

“Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date.”

“You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”

“America should stand for more than just wealth.”

“Consciously paying more for a stock than its calculated value - in the hope that it can soon be sold for a still-higher price - should be labelled speculation”

“We try to exert a Ted Williams kind of discipline. In his book The Science of Hitting, Ted explains that he carved the strike zone into 77 cells, each the size of a baseball. Swinging only at balls in his "best" cell, he knew, would allow him to bat .400; reaching for balls in his "worst" spot, the low outside corner of the strike zone, would reduce him to .230. In other words, waiting for the fat pitch would mean a trip to the Hall of Fame; swinging indiscriminately would mean a ticket to the minors.”

“Do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the most important thing.”

“If at first you do succeed, quit trying on investing.”

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.”

“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.”

“You get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots.”

“You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.”

“I can't promise results, but I can promise a common destiny.”

“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.”

“I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.”

“I know what I want to do and it makes sense to get going.”

“The Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does.”

“Never lie under any circumstances.”

“If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.”

“Never get too hung up on mistakes.”

“Trust is like the air we breathe--when it's present, nobody really notices; when it's absent, everybody notices.”

“If you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or - whomever around their office.”

“I don't want to be on the other side of the table from the customer. I was never selling anything that I didn't believe in myself or use myself.”

“I do not like debt and do not like to invest in companies that have too much debt, particularly long-term debt. With long-term debt, increases in interest rates can drastically affect company profits and make future cash flows less predictable.”

“The secret to happiness is having low expectations.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.”

“What's going to happen - things we're doing are going to have some inflationary consequences.”

“It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. In the stock market you don't base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.”

“Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I don't think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum.”

“We all make mistakes. If you can't make mistakes, you can't make decisions. I've made a lot bigger mistakes myself.”

“Making money isn't the backbone of our guiding purpose; making money is the by-product of our guiding purpose. If you're doing something you love, you're more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to making money”

“The purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible among those you want to have love you”

“I just don't see anything available that gives any reasonable hope of delivering such a good year and I have no desire to grope around, hoping to 'get lucky' with other people's money. I am not attuned to this market environment, and I don't want to spoil a decent record by trying to play a game I don't understand just so I can go out a hero.”

“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.”

“I buy expensive suits - they just look cheap on me.”

“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.”

“We have a country where I don't know whether it's a million households a year or more, but good form.”

“I’ve never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don’t have and don’t need.”

“John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don't try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.”

“Don't pass up something that's attractive today because you think you will find something way more attractive tomorrow.”

“It's not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble.”

“Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume.”

“Knowing the edge of your competency is important. If you think you know more than you do, you will get in trouble.”

“We look for things I can understand. A lot of businesses I don't understand.”

“You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

“We really can say no in 10 seconds or so to 90% and more of all the things that come along simply because we have these filters.”

“All I have to do is think and not be influenced by others.”