#Investment Quotes

“Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets, but gold that's put to use more gold begets.”

“You cannot make a cheap palace.”

“There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”

“Invest in inflation. It is the only thing going up.”

“The stock market has spoiled more appetites than bad cooking.”

“In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in!”

“Just been talking today out here to all the Senators investigating these stock swindles and overcapitalizations. There has been hundreds of millions lost. There ought to be some form of guardianship for people that buy all this junk. Education won't do it. The buyers are the ones we have educated up till they are just smart enough to fall for everything that comes along.”

“It is not the return on my investment that I am concerned about; it's the return of my investment”

“The average American thinks billionaire investors are going to be right based on some talking head. They invest and they have no backup plan. Americans think these guys are giant risk-takers. The truth is they believe in taking as little risk as humanly possible, for the maximum amount of upside. They're looking for that spread of disproportionate risk-reward.”

“Don't wait to buy land, Buy land and wait. Find out where the people are going and buy the land before they get there.”

“People should be more concerned with the return of their principal than the return on their principal.”

“The greatest investment a young person can make is in their own education, in their own mind. Because money comes and goes. Relationships come and go. But what you learn once stays with you forever.”

“The stock market is a wonderfully efficient mechanism for transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient.”

“A single year's performance is of minor importance and, good or bad, should never be taken seriously.”

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

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself... nobody can tax it or take it away from you.”

“Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, 'Too much of a good thing can be wonderful'.”

“I'm not so much interested in the return ON my money as I am in the return OF my money.”

“Real estate is the best investment in the world because it is the only thing they're not making any more.”

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself. Very few people get anything like their potential horsepower translated into the actual horsepower of their output in life. Potential exceeds realization for many people...The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be.”

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

“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.”

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

“I like to buy things I can understand. I do a lot of research on things.”

“Would your reply possibly be this? Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you're saying we're going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent. Only in Grover Norquist's imagination does such a response exist.”

“The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself... The more you learn, the more you'll earn.”

“You should be unconcerned about short-term price action when you own the securities directly, just as you were unconcerned when you owned them indirectly through BPL. I think about them as businesses, not "stocks", and if the business does all right over the long term, so will the stock.”

“Read Ben Graham and Phil Fisher read annual reports, but don't do equations with Greek letters in them.”

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

“Don't wait to buy land, buy land and wait.”

“The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.”

“In the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth.”

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

“Other guys read Playboy. I read annual reports.”

“It is obvious that the performance of a stock last year or last month is no reason, per se, to either own it or to not own it now. It is obvious that an inability to "get even" in a security that has declined is of no importance. It is obvious that the inner warm glow that results from having held a winner last year is of no importance in making a decision as to whether it belongs in an optimum portfolio this year.”

“Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime, it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart and not too smart at that, only a very few times. Indeed, we now settle for one good idea a year.”

“The trouble with land is that they're not making it anymore.”

“The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect.”

“Our favorite holding period is forever.”

“Value is what you get.”

“The best investment you can make is in yourself.”

“... but the important thing is that when you do find one where you really do know what you are doing, you must buy in quantity.... Charlie and I have made a dozen or so very big decisions relative to net worth, although not as big as they should have been. And in each of those, we've known that we were almost certain to be right going in.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Out here I had been putting what little money I had in Ocean Frontage, for the sole reason that there was only so much of it and no more, and that they wasent making any more.”

“Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.”