Investor Quotes

“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

“Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.”

“I'll take the deal, whatever you want to do.”

“Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.”

“I don't measure my life by the money I've made. Other people might, but certainly don't.”

“In my view, [the trade deficit] will create political turmoil at some point...Pretty soon, I think there will be a big adjustment.”

“It makes a difference who the treasury secretary is.”

“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.”

“To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. You must supply the emotional discipline.”

“The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be”

“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.”

“Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.”

“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”

“You know, with your money and my brains, I mean, there's no telling how far we'd go.”

“The extraordinary business does not require good management.”

“That's been lost. It's a huge problem. What you have is you have the major institutions of the world all wanting to deleverage. They want to take down their assets and liabilities. What seemed so easy to borrow against a year ago now looks like rat poison to them. So they're trying to deleverage. There is only one institution in the world that can leverage up in a way that's all a countervailing force to that, and that's the United States Treasury.”

“There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.”

“In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.”

“Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.”

“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.”

“Do what you love and work for whom you admire the most, and you've given yourself the best chance in life you can.”

“I think you should read everything you can. In my case, by the age of 10, I'd read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice.You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense.”

“I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone - not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 - shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”

“If, when making a stock investment, you're not considering holding it at least ten years, don't waste more than ten minutes considering it.”