Warren Buffett Quotes

I always invest in companies an idiot could run, because one day one will.

I made my first investment at age eleven. I was wasting my life up until then.

A low-cost index fund is the most sensible equity investment for the great majority of investors. My mentor, Ben Graham, took this position many years ago, and everything I have seen since convinces me of its truth.

I mean, you may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing.

You have hedge funds and people like that buying these assets to yield 15 or 20 percent, I mean, that's the buyer for these people that are trying to unload them.

At this point, when treasury bills, seven day treasury bills at 1/20th of one percent, it's not because people want to earn 1/20th of one percent, it's because they trust the fact the treasury will give it back to them next week.

I'm happy when I can spend every day doing the things that I like to do. That's my luxury.

With enough insider information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year.

As of 1992, in fact-though the picture would have improved since then-the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.

The truth is, everything that has happened in my life... that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better.

Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.

I'm sitting with six and a half billion dollars we're going to use to close the Mars-Wrigley deal on October 6. I've got to hand over that six and a half billion on October 6. Now, I have to be very careful about who I leave it in between now and then, because they're expecting that he show up.

We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a 'romantic.'

I believe the chance of any event causing Berkshire to experience financial problems is essentially zero. We will always be prepared for the thousand-year flood; in fact, if it occurswe will be selling life jackets to the unprepared.

Personally, I really hope I can treat everyone equally. I think I have done a pretty good job so far but I know I can do it better.

If I knew where I was going to want to live the next five or 10 years I would buy a home and I'd finance it with a 30-year mortgage... It's a terrific deal.

You don't need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you aren't, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don't swing for the fences.

When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: 'we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.

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

This country is going - be living better ten years from now than it is now. It will be living better in 20 years from now than ten years from now. The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world - I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century.

In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now.

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

Mr. Market is your servant, not your guide.

I think the worst mistake you can make in stocks is to buy or sell based on current headlines.

Asset values and earning power are the dominant factors affecting the valuation of a controlling interest in a business. Market price, which governs valuation of minority interest positions, is of little or no importance in valuing a controlling interest.

What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note that word “selected”: You don't have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.

If you can tell me who your heroes are, I can tell you how you're going to turn out in life.

When I take a look at a company's annual report, if I don't understand it, they don't want me to understand it.

I wouldn't want to manufacture cigarettes. But if I owned - we do own Costco. Do they sell them? Yes. So I don't have a problem owning stock in that. But I just wouldn't want to - I wouldn't want to do it myself. I basically think, if anything is sufficiently antisocial, society should do something about it. But that's a separate question. But - and I don't think there's any company that I have seen that's 100 percent pure.

I always say that in investing you want to buy stock in a company that has a business that's so good that an idiot can run it, because sooner or later one will. We have a country like that.

I make no effort to predict the course of general business or the stock market. Period. However, currently there are practices snowballing in the security markets and business world which, while devoid of short term predictive value, bother me as to possible long term consequences.

Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own.

People do, as long as you have markets, you'll have excesses.

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.

The greater the potential for reward in the value portfolio, the less risk there is.

In my opinion, the entire field of investment management, involving hundreds of billions of dollars, would be more satisfactorily conducted if everyone had a good yardstick for measurement of ability and sensibly applied it.

This economy doesn't work well without the lubrication of credit and trust.

The latter qualification brings to mind a fellow who applied for a job and stated he had twenty years of experience-which was corrected by a former employer to read "one year's experience-twenty times.

We have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.

Things you like to do should be a hobby of yours, but things the world does should be a business of yours.

We have to live with the rest of the world. And it's a mistake, in my view. Trade has generally developed in this country. We actually export 12 or 13 percent of our GDP. It was only 5 percent in 1970. But it benefits us. It benefits the rest of the world. It doesn't benefit the steelworker maybe in Ohio. And that's the problem that has to be addressed, because when you have something that's good for society, but terribly harmful for given individuals, we have got to make sure those individuals are taken care of.

We only want to link up with people whom we like, admire, and trust. ... We do not wish to join with managers who lack admirable qualities, no matter how attractive the prospects of their business. We've never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person.

Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.

An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.

It's quite clear that stocks are cheaper than bonds. I can't imagine anybody having bonds in their portfolio when they can own equities, a diversified group of equities. But people do because they, the lack of confidence. But that's what makes for the attractive prices. If they had their confidence back, they wouldn't be selling at these prices. And believe me, it will come back over time.

I think the biggest thing we need is to unclog the credit markets, and we may need another stimulus - if we do, it's - it should go to the lower and middle-income people.

The plan itself is opportunism. There is no plan before that.

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