Warren Buffett Quotes

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

Investors should remember that their scorecard is not computed using Olympic-diving methods: Degree-of-difficulty doesn't count. If you are right about a business whose value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand and enduring, the payoff is the same as if you had correctly analyzed an investment alternative characterized by many constantly shifting and complex variables.

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.

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

Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.

Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.

Although we deal with probabilities and expectations, the actual results can deviate substantially from such expectations, particularly on a short-term basis.

That which is not worth doing at all is not worth doing well.

The rest of the world really likes our stuff pretty well. It's just we buy so damn much of what they produce.

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

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill

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.

I'm always interested in understanding the math of things and understanding as much as I can about all aspects of business. And what I learn today may be useful to me two years from now. That's really the wonderful thing about investments is your knowledge is cumulative.

Credit worthiness is like virginity, it can be preserved but not restored very easily, so it is crazy to play around with it.

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.

We've got more productive capacity now than we ever have.

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

It's just that I landed up in a terrific capitalist system. One that pays people who allocate capital extraordinarily well. Intrinsically, I'm not worth as much as somebody who invents something that could improves people's life, or health or whatever.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

That goes back to 1932, although it was really implemented in '33 under Jesse Jones, and it invested in mostly banks initially and preferred stock and that sort of thing. So there are two things needed in the system, the one that's needed overwhelmingly is liquidity. I mean, when people are trying to [unintelligible], there has to be somebody there to buy.

Asset-heavy businesses generally earn low rates of return - rates that often barely provide enough capital to fund the inflationary needs of the existing business, with nothing left over for real growth, for distribution to owners, or for acquisition of new businesses

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.

Time is your friend, impulse is your enemy. Take advantage of compound interest and don't be captivated by the siren song of the market.

It's almost impossible to overpay the truly extraordinary CEO... but the species is rare.

Don't risk what is important to you, to get what is not important to you.

I spend twelve hours a week - a little over 10% of my waking hours - playing the game. Now I am trying to figure out how to get by on less sleep in order to fit in a few more hands.

A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable problem.

Larger sums may be an advantage at some cases and a disadvantage at others.

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

The value of market esoterica to the consumer of investment advice is a different story. In my opinion, investment success will not be produced by arcane formulae, computer programs or signals flashed by the price behavior of stocks and markets. Rather 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.

You are lucky in life if you have the right heroes. I advise all of you, to the extent you can, to pick out a few heroes

In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.

Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

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

When a management with reputation for brilliance gets hooked up with a business with a reputation for bad economics, it's the reputation of the business that remains intact.

If we have a strength, it is in recognizing when we are operating well within our circle of competence and when we are approaching the perimeter.

I'd rather have a $10 million business making 15 per cent than a $100 million business making 5 per cent.

It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.

[Economy] is flat on the floor, and the paramedics have arrived. And they shouldn't argue about whether they put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way or a quarter of an inch this way, or they shouldn't start criticizing the patient, because he didn't have a blood pressure test or something like that. They should do what's needed right now.

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we've got a system that allows them to do it.

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

I read annual reports of the company I'm looking at and I read the annual reports of the competitors - that is the main source of material.

Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.

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

I've read about all the sales today. If you're an auto dealer, you're feeling it. If you're a furniture retailer like we are, you're feeling it. If you're a jewelry retailer, you're feeling it. I know some of these businesses because we're in them. Yeah, it's being felt, but it will be felt big time more if we don't do something about it, what's going on.

There is no perfect mathematical formula for pricing a business.

We've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous.