“I don't know that I could draw one that's perfect. But I'd rather by approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down.”
“Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.”
“I wouldn’t mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge”
“For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn't work is when you start doing things that you don't understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.”
“If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.”
“It irritates the hell out of me but you can't buy love.”
“There is no staff. I make all the investment decisions and I do all my own analysis.”
“Mr. Market is your servant, not your guide.”
“I always invest in companies an idiot could run, because one day one will.”
“We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven't learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.”
“I never invest in anything that I don't understand.”
“Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on.”
“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.”
“Focus alone is not enough; putting in the time to commit is also crucial to achieve success.”
“An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.”
“If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.”
“The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.”
“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.”
“Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.”
“Knowing the edge of your competency is important. If you think you know more than you do, you will get in trouble.”
“I've never been very fully employed either but just think of what it's like, you know, to go home with a mortgage payment you know and kids and everything else. My dad had that happen to him in the early '30s.”
“It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.”
“When we really sit back with a smile on our face is when we run into a situation we can understand, where the facts are ascertainable and clear, and the course of action obvious.”
“I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand.”
“If AIG had tried to unwind their derivatives books. I don't know. It would have hit every institution in the world.”
