Warren Buffett Quotes

After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie [Munger] and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them. To the extent we have been successful, it is because we have concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers.

Investing requires qualities of temperament way more than it requires qualities of intellect.

The most dangerous distractions are the ones you love, but that don’t love you back.

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.

Look for companies with high profit margins.

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

I choose to work with every single person that I work with. That ends up being the most important factor. I don't interact with people I don't like or admire. That's the key. It's like marrying.

Mark Zuckerberg will be a hero to many young entrepreneurs 20 years from now. Bill Gates will be a hero to others, and they will look to those [people] like I read books when I was in my teens about Rockefeller or Carnegie.

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.

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

It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.

In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.

In the end we must have people to match our principles, not the reverse.

Let only individuals contribute - with sensible limits per election. Otherwise, we are well on our way to ensuring that a government of the moneyed, by the moneyed, and for the moneyed shall not perish from the earth.

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it's the lack of change that appeals to me. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like.

We make investment decisions based on our evaluation of the most profitable combination of probabilities.

It's a nightmare to administer some of this sort of thing, but I want to tell the shareholders of Berkshire, to the percent we own marketable securities or things for which there are market, even if those markets - I want to tell them what it's all about.

Making money isn't the backbone of our guiding purpose; it is the by-product of our guiding purpose.

Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.

Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.

The future is never clear; you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.

People will always try to stop you from doing the right thing if it is unconventional.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Beware [of] the investment activity that produces applause; the great moves are usually greeted by yawns.

Don't settle for anything other than your passion - if you're lucky enough to find it.

You could take all the gold that's ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what that's worth at current gold prices, you could buy all -- not some -- all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?

If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball.

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.

I think what people understand there probably - well, they were hoping the private sector would do it [rescuing AIG ].

I mean, you can explain the fact that these are depressed prices, you know. We think these assets are going to be worth a lot more. And I think that case can be made in certain situations. But I think to just say, you know, we're going to say a dollar of cash is worth $2 all of a sudden, it isn't worth $2. It's worth a dollar today.

If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.

Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books ... If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer.

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements.

You've got the right - you've got a wonderful person with Sheila Bair, most of the viewers have never heard of Sheila Bair. [She] has taken eight percent of the deposits in the United States and seamlessly moved those over to sound institutions which in turn have gotten more capital, ended up, it's been a magnificent job.She'll never get a golden parachute or any severance pay or anything. She's done a great job. We've got some great public servants. We have I think the right people in there to get the job done, and then they need more tools.

Your money can be inflated away but your knowledge and talent cannot.

If you buy the things you don't need, you will soon be selling the things that you need.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping.

A Company should be viewed as an unfolding movie, not as a still photograph

If you don't make mistakes you can't make decisions.

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

Charlie and I have a number of filters that things have to get through before we'll think about them.

I'm putting all my money in the Chinese toy market.

What we really want to do is buy businesses that we would be happy to own forever.

Traditional wisdom is long on tradition and short on wisdom.

We're still in a recession. We're not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.

I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am no investor.