Popular quotes from Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is considered an investing genius and often referred to as the Oracle of Ohama. He has made average returns for his investment company Berkshire Hathaway that leave many at Wall Street in envy. Together with his straight-talking lieutenant Charlie Munger he has driven the share price from around $11 USD in 1967 to over $400,000 in 2022.

“The year 2015 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Berkshire Hathaway under Warren Buffett's leadership, a milestone worth commemorating. The tenure sets a record”

—Warren Buffett

“If options aren't a form of compensation, what are they? If compensation isn't an expense, what is it? And, if expenses shouldn't go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?”

—Warren Buffett

“Our goal will be to acquire either part or all of businesses that we believe we understand, that have good, sustainable underlying economics, and that are run by managers whom we like, admire and trust.”

—Warren Buffett

“Buy the dip.”

—Warren Buffett

“Some time ago Ken Galbraith, in his witty and insightful The Great Crash, coined a new economic term: “the bezzle,” defined as the current amount of undiscovered embezzlement. This financial creature has a magical quality: The embezzlers are richer by the amount of the bezzle, while the embezzlees do not yet feel poorer.”

—Warren Buffett

“While investors and managers must place their feet in the future, their memories and nervous systems often remain plugged into the past.”

—Warren Buffett

“Money is Like Cow Poop, it Does No Good Unless You Spread It Around”

—Warren Buffett

“Over-all, we probably would have retained better prospects for the next five years if profits had not risen so dramatically this year.”

—Warren Buffett

“Managers who want to expand their domain at the expense of owners might better consider a career in government.”

—Warren Buffett

“Cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you wait till you know everything it's too late”

—Warren Buffett

“You do not need to be terrifically smart to do well as an investor at all.”

—Warren Buffett

“Those who invest only when commentators are upbeat end up paying a heavy price for meaningless reassurance.”

—Warren Buffett

“Regardless of the impact upon immediately reportable earnings, we would rather buy 10% of Wonderful Business T at X per share than 100% of T at 2x per share. Most corporate managers prefer just the reverse.”

—Warren Buffett

“A small chance of distress or disgrace cannot, in our view, be offset by a large chance of extra returns.”

—Warren Buffett

“The Great Bubble ended on March 10, 2000 (though we didn’t realize that fact until some months later). On that day, the NASDAQ (recently 1,731) hit its all-time high of 5,132. That same day, Berkshire shares traded at $40,800, their lowest price since mid-1997.”

—Warren Buffett

“Especially favourable future prospects were regarded by shrewd investors as something to look for but not to pay for”

—Warren Buffett

“At Berkshire, full reporting means giving you the information that we would wish you to give to us if our positions were reversed.”

—Warren Buffett

“What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.”

—Warren Buffett

“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.”

—Warren Buffett

“Loss of focus is what most worries Charlie and me when we contemplate investing in businesses that in general look outstanding. All too often, we’ve seen value stagnate in the presence of hubris or of boredom that caused the attention of managers to wander.”

—Warren Buffett

“Mrs. B belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records on many counts. Signing a non-compete at 99 merely adds one more.”

—Warren Buffett

“In our book, alignment means being a partner in both directions, not just on the upside. Many “alignment” plans flunk this basic test, being artful forms of “heads I win, tails you lose.“”

—Warren Buffett

“I've never believed in risking what my family and friends have and need in order to pursue what they don't have and don't need.”

—Warren Buffett

“Don't work for money, make money work for you.”

—Warren Buffett

“For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners.”

—Warren Buffett

“It is not greed that drives the world but envy.”

—Warren Buffett

“Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

—Warren Buffett

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you buy things you don't need, soon you will have to sell things you need.”

—Warren Buffett

“The best investment you can make is in yourself.”

—Warren Buffett

“It is madness to risk losing what you need in pursuing what you simply desire.”

—Warren Buffett

“Instead, he takes those coupons from his low-return bond and—if inclined to reinvest—looks for the highest return with safety currently available. Good money is not thrown after bad.”

—Warren Buffett

“There's never just one cockroach in the kitchen.”

—Warren Buffett

“A line from Bobby Bare’s country song explains what too often happens with acquisitions: “I’ve never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I’ve sure woke up with a few.”

—Warren Buffett

“Naming the plane has not been easy. I initially suggested ‘The Charles T. Munger.’ Charlie countered with ‘The Aberration.’ We finally settled on ‘The Indefensible.‘”

—Warren Buffett

“Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.”

—Warren Buffett

“The requisites for board membership should be business savvy, interest in the job, and owner-orientation.”

—Warren Buffett

“An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.”

—Warren Buffett

“My life couldn't be happier. In fact, it'd be worse if I had six or eight houses. So, I have everything I need to have, and I don't need any more because it doesn't make a difference after a point”

—Warren Buffett

“Charlie and I would follow a buy-and-hold policy even if we ran a tax-exempt institution.”

—Warren Buffett

“We are suspicious of those CEOs who regularly claim they do know the future—and we become downright incredulous if they consistently reach their declared targets. Managers that always promise to “make the numbers” will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.”

—Warren Buffett

“Can you imagine any public company embracing a business model that would lead to the decline in revenue that we experienced from 1986 through 1999?”

—Warren Buffett

“If you can't tell whose side someone is on, they are not on yours.”

—Warren Buffett

“Do what you love and work for whom you admire the most, and you've given yourself the best chance in life you can.”

—Warren Buffett

“A good business is not always a good purchase - although it's a good place to look for one.”

—Warren Buffett

“My favourite holding period is forever”

—Warren Buffett

“For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.”

—Warren Buffett

“For Buffett, managers are stewards of shareholder capital. The best managers think like owners in making business decisions.”

—Warren Buffett

“It’s not that I want money. It’s the fun of making money and watching it grow.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes.”

—Warren Buffett

“Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.”

—Warren Buffett

“Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required. Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are.”

—Warren Buffett

“Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.”

—Warren Buffett

“From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required.”

—Warren Buffett

“To be successful, look for the job you will take if you don't need a job”

—Warren Buffett

“You should never test the depth of the water with both feet.”

—Warren Buffett

“Charlie’s dictum: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die so I’ll never go there.”

—Warren Buffett

“The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.”

—Warren Buffett

“I like it when people say, ‘Gee, that’s a pretty good-looking painting.’ But it’s my painting, and when somebody says, ‘Why don’t you use more red instead of blue?’ Good-bye. It’s my painting. And I don’t care what they sell it for. The painting itself will never be finished. That’s one of the great things about it.”

—Warren Buffett

“Alas, my “fiddle playing” will not get me to Carnegie Hall — or even to a high school recital. Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Treasury $3.3 billion for tax on its 2003 income, a sum equaling 2½% of the total income tax paid by all U.S. corporations in fiscal 2003.”

—Warren Buffett

“Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.”

—Warren Buffett

“In the 54 years (Charlie Munger and I) have worked together, we have never forgone an attractive purchase because of the macro or political environment, or the views of other people. In fact, these subjects never come up when we make decisions.”

—Warren Buffett

“ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency.”

—Warren Buffett

“It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”

—Warren Buffett

“If your employees, including your CEO, wish to give to their alma maters or other institutions to which they feel a personal attachment, we believe they should use their own money, not yours.”

—Warren Buffett

“There is no tougher job in corporate America than running an airline: Despite the huge amounts of equity capital that have been injected into it, the industry, in aggregate, has posted a net loss since its birth after Kitty Hawk. Airline managers need brains, guts, and experience—and”

—Warren Buffett

“It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.”

—Warren Buffett

“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.”

—Warren Buffett

“Our favorite holding period is forever. We are just the opposite of those who hurry to sell and book profits when companies perform well but who tenaciously hang on to businesses that disappoint. Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you see somebody with even reasonable intelligence and a terrific passion for what they do and who can get people around them to march, even when those people can't see over the top of the next hill, things are gonna happen”

—Warren Buffett

“Many shall be restored that now are fallen and many shall fall that are now in honor.”

—Warren Buffett

“Never give up searching for the job that you are passionate about”

—Warren Buffett

“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.”

—Warren Buffett

“Reading could be the BEST addiction one could have. The only proven side effect is imagination & an edge in knowledge.”

—Warren Buffett

“The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money.”

—Warren Buffett

“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

—Warren Buffett

“as happens in Wall Street all too often, what the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

—Warren Buffett

“The more you learn, the more you earn.”

—Warren Buffett

“Culture, more than rule books, determines how an organization behaves.”

—Warren Buffett

“our experience with newly-minted MBAs has not been that great. Their academic records always look terrific and the candidates always know just what to say; but too often they are short on personal commitment to the company and general business savvy. It’s difficult to teach a new dog old tricks.”

—Warren Buffett

“Stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: “Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth.“”

—Warren Buffett

“But then it dawned on me that the opinion of someone who is always wrong has its own special utility to decision-makers.”

—Warren Buffett

“I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful”

—Warren Buffett

“Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you’d be content to own it in the absence of any market.”

—Warren Buffett

“When a person with money meets a person with experience, the one with experience ends up with the money and the one with money leaves with experience.”

—Warren Buffett

“It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked.”

—Warren Buffett

“Having firstrate people on the team is more important than designing hierarchies and clarifying who reports to whom”

—Warren Buffett

“If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But, if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”

—Warren Buffett

“In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't.”

—Warren Buffett

“Derivatives are like sex. It's not who we're sleeping with, it's who they're sleeping with that's the problem.”

—Warren Buffett

“Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source.”

—Warren Buffett

“We need a moderately-priced stock market… The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do. For the investor, a too-high purchase price for the stock of an excellent company can undo the effects of a subsequent decade of favorable business developments.”

—Warren Buffett

“Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.”

—Warren Buffett

“Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press”

—Warren Buffett

“calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor “is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.”

—Warren Buffett

“...not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.”

—Warren Buffett

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”

—Warren Buffett

“I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

—Warren Buffett

“You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideals come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an ideal next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.”

—Warren Buffett

“Writing a check separates a commitment from a conversation.”

—Warren Buffett

“A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse—not a remarkable mathematician.”

—Warren Buffett

“Intensity is the price of excellence.”

—Warren Buffett

“If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.”

—Warren Buffett

“In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.”

—Warren Buffett

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

—Warren Buffett

“I am not a businessman, I am an artist”

—Warren Buffett

“If you aren't thinking about owning a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes.”

—Warren Buffett

“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.”

—Warren Buffett

“You know ... you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.”

—Warren Buffett

“Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”

—Warren Buffett

“Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

—Warren Buffett

“Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.”

—Warren Buffett

“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble”

—Warren Buffett

“Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”

—Warren Buffett

“You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with magic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.”

—Warren Buffett

“Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.”

—Warren Buffett

“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.”

—Warren Buffett

“In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.”

—Warren Buffett

“I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire.”

—Warren Buffett

“I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.”

—Warren Buffett

“When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”

—Warren Buffett

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.”

—Warren Buffett

“Games are won by players who focus on the playing field – not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.”

—Warren Buffett

“It's nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don't want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it's a little like saving sex for your old age.”

—Warren Buffett

“I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.”

—Warren Buffett

“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

—Warren Buffett

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.”

—Warren Buffett

“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.”

—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

“It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

—Warren Buffett

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

—Warren Buffett

“There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn't that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

—Warren Buffett

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

—Warren Buffett

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing”

—Warren Buffett

“The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.”

—Warren Buffett

“If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

—Warren Buffett

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett

“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”

—Warren Buffett

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

—Warren Buffett

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

—Warren Buffett