Warren Buffett Quotes

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.

I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.

An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.

An investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace.

Charlie [Munger] and I are not big fans of resumes. Instead, we focus on brains, passion and integrity.

Investing is simple, but not easy.

If you want a government that's going to do the things we ask our government to do, you've got to get it from somebody.

There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.

Money is not everything. Make sure you earn a lot before speaking such nonsense.

If you're extremely rich, and you have got children, my theory was, you give them enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.

I checked the actuarial tables, and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds. So I decided to eat like a six-year-old.

I think that actually people in my situation should be paying more tax.

I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I'd been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can't run very fast. I'm not particularly strong. I'd probably end up as some wild animal's dinner.

Very successful people say no to almost everything.

Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.

When you build a bridge, you insist that it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000-pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing.

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time.

I may have more money than you, but money doesn't make the difference. Ifthere is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you learn anything from me, this is the best advice I can give you.

We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

If you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do.

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.

We also believe candour benefits us as managers. The CEO who misleads often in public eventually misleads himself in private.

I think confidence will come back.

Is management rational?

Failure comes from ego, greed, envy, fear, imitation. I have success not because I am smart, but because I am rational.

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.

I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of - of American capitalism.

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.

I lose confidence in other people, all kinds of institutions.

You’d get very rich if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. You’d resist the temptation to dabble. You’d make more good decisions and you’d make more big decisions.

Games are won by players who focus on the playing field -- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.

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.

Never risk what you have and need for what we don't have and don't need.

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.

Exercise humility and restraint.

Benign neglect, bordering on sloth, remains the hallmark of our investment process.

Turnarounds seldom turn.

The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner.

There's no use running if you're on the wrong road.

If horses had controlled investment decisions, there would have been no auto industry.

Part of making good decisions in business is recognizing the poor decisions you've made and why they were poor. I've made lots of mistakes. I'm going to make more. It's the name of the game. You don't want to expect perfection in yourself. You want to strive to do your best. It's too demanding to expect perfection in yourself.

I have three boxes on my desk: In, Out, and Too Hard.

The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything – you can wait for your pitch.

You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.

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.

I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the finanical system to let me do what I love doing-and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.

Outstanding long-term results are produced primarily by avoiding dumb decisions, rather than by making brilliant ones.

It's never paid to bet against America.

I think people - what people want to do is make [economy] get worse.

Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You're going to do well at it.

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.

The three most important words in investing...Margin of Safety.

The key to success is emotional stability.

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.

Learning how to live is much more important than learning how to make a living.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

It’s not that I want money. It’s the fun of making money and watching it grow.