Warren Buffett Quotes

111 Sourced Quotes

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

Warren Buffett
When returns on capital are ordinary, an earn-more-by-putting-up-more record is no great managerial achievement. You can get the same result personally while operating from your rocking chair. Just quadruple the capital you commit to a savings account and you will quadruple your earnings. You would hardly expect hosannas for that particular accomplishment. Yet, retirement announcements regularly sing the praises of CEOs who have, say, quadrupled earnings of their widget company during their reign — with no one examining whether this gain was attributable simply to many years of retained earnings and the workings of compound interest.

Warren Buffett
Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Warren Buffett
We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow's obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits.

Warren Buffett
Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising "Take two aspirins"?

Warren Buffett
Take the job that you would take if you were independently wealthy.

Warren Buffett
It's a game of a million inferences. There are a lot of things to draw inferences from — cards played and not played. These inferences tell you something about the probabilities. It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

Warren Buffett
I just read and read and read.... I have always enjoyed reading.

Warren Buffett
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.

Warren Buffett
It's simply to say that managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers is the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.

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

Warren Buffett
Putting people into homes, though a desirable goal, shouldn't be our country's primary objective. Keeping them in their homes should be the ambition.

Warren Buffett
After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Warren Buffett
We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.

Warren Buffett
The most common cause of low prices is pessimism — some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.

Warren Buffett
Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.

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

Warren Buffett
The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen). Say you want to write a contract speculating on the number of twins to be born in Nebraska in 2020. No problem-at a price, you will easily find an obliging counterparty.

Warren Buffett
Success in investing doesn't correlate with I. Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.

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

Warren Buffett