Warren Buffett Quotes

111 Sourced Quotes

Those who attended [the annual meeting] last year saw your Chairman pitch to Ernie Banks. This encounter proved to be the titanic duel that the sports world had long awaited. After the first few pitches — which were not my best, but when have I ever thrown my best? — I fired a brushback at Ernie just to let him know who was in command. Ernie charged the mound, and I charged the plate. But a clash was avoided because we became exhausted before reaching each other.

Warren Buffett
The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago.

Warren Buffett
I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. … It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty.

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

Warren Buffett
If you invested in a very low cost index fund — where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.

Warren Buffett
I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge. … The approach and strategies [of bridge and stock investing] are very similar. In the stock market you do not base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. With bridge, you need to adhere to a disciplined bidding system. While there is no one best system, there is one that works best for you. Once you choose a system, you need to stick with it.

Warren Buffett
Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime, it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart and not too smart at that, only a very few times. Indeed, we now settle for one good idea a year.

Warren Buffett
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.

Warren Buffett
We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet.

Warren Buffett
Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.

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

Warren Buffett
If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.

Warren Buffett
If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety...

Warren Buffett
It's class warfare. My class is winning, but they shouldn't be.

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
You can't make a good deal with a bad person.

Warren Buffett
But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.

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

Warren Buffett
The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.

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

Warren Buffett
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Warren Buffett
Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.

Warren Buffett
You want to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to be fearful when others are greedy. It's that simple. … They're pretty fearful. In fact, in my adult lifetime, I don't think I've ever seen people as fearful economically as they are right now.

Warren Buffett
Instead, we try to apply Aesop's 2,600-year-old equation to opportunities in which we have reasonable confidence as to how many birds are in the bush and when they will emerge (a formulation that my grandsons would probably update to "A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.").

Warren Buffett
I've reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death — abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term "thinking outside the box."

Warren Buffett