Warren Buffett Quotes

I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

A pin lies in wait for every bubble and when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons.

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.

You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: "I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love." But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine.

Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.

A market downturn, doesn't bother us. For us and our long term investors, it is an opportunity to increase our ownership of great companies with great management at good prices. Only for short term investors and market timers is a correction not an opportunity.

No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats.

If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.

You don't want 300 million Americans putting their money under the mattress.

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. The person sitting in the shade now should be grateful for the person who planted and tended that tree. That includes all those benefactors of humanity throughout history that created, invented, financed, produced, maintained and improved all that we enjoy today.

Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior.

It's easier to create money than to spend it.

Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people.

I've already written a section in the annual report for next year explaining why I think in one case that the figures on our balance sheet as calculated are wrong. But it's the standard way of doing it. It's holy writ. The SEC wants us to do it that way, and we'll do it that way, and I'll explain why I think it's wrong and shareholders can read it and see whether they agree with my logic or don't.

There is one thing of which I can assure you. If good performance of the fund is even a minor objective, any portfolio encompassing one hundred stocks (whether the manager is handling one thousand dollars or one billion dollars) is not being operated logically. The addition of the one hundredth stock simply can't reduce the potential variance in portfolio performance sufficiently to compensate for the negative effect its inclusion has on the overall portfolio expectation.

It's a lot easier to buy things than it is to sell them.

Good profits simply are not inconsistent with good behavior.

The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

Gold has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative.

First, many in Wall Street - a community in which quality control is not prized - will sell investors anything they will buy.

I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable.

Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

Never give up searching for the job that you’re passionate about. Try to find the job you’d have if you were independently rich. Forget about the pay. When you’re associating with the people that you love, doing what you love, it doesn’t get any better than that.

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

I make plenty of mistakes and I'll make plenty more mistakes, too. That's part of the game. You've just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.

The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power.

Does management resist the institutional imperative?

People always ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most.

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

We've had public companies in the past in that business and they bleed. We've got a lot more blood than they do.

[The U.S. Treasury] can borrow basically unlimited amounts. They can stay there for years and years. These assets will be worth more money over time. So when Merrill Lynch sells a bunch of mortgage-related assets at 22 cents on the dollar like they did a month or so ago, the buyer goes - is going to make money, and he's going to make a lot more money if it happens to be an institution like the U.S. government which has very, very cheap borrowing costs.

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.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

Calculate "owner earnings" to get a true reflection of value.

You get in a lot of trouble when you start putting fictitious numbers.

When people talk about cash being king, it's not king if it just sits there and never does anything.

The 19th century belonged to England, the 20th century belonged to the U.S., and the 21st century belongs to China. Invest accordingly.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper-middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

For some reason people take their cues from price action rather than from values. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

There are three important principles to Graham's approach. [The first is to look at stocks as fractional shares of a business, which] gives you an entirely different view than most people who are in the market. [The second principle is the margin-of-safety concept, which] gives you the competitive advantage. [The third is having a true investor's attitude toward the stock market, which] if you have that attitude, you start out ahead of 99 percent of all the people who are operating in the stock market - it's an enormous advantage.

Many stock options in the corporate world have worked in exactly that fashion: they have gained in value simply because management retained earnings, not because it did well with the capital in its hands.

Businesses always have opportunities to improve service, product lines, manufacturing techniques, and the like, and obviously these opportunities should be seized. But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error

There is no question that an important service is provided to investors by investment companies, investment advisors, trust departments, etc. This service revolves around the attainment of adequate diversification, the preservation of a long-term outlook, the ease of handling investment decisions and mechanics, and most importantly, the avoidance of the patently inferior investment techniques which seem to entice some individuals.