Warren Buffett Quotes
376 Warren Buffett Quotes
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It is not that we don’t understand a technology business or it’s product. The reason we don’t invest is because we can’t understand the predictability of the economics ten years hence.
Warren Buffett
Your goal as an investor should be simply to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily understood business whose earning’s are virtually certain to be materially higher, five, ten and twenty years from now. Overtime, you will find only a few companies that meet those standards – so when you see one that qualifies, you should buy a meaningful amount of stock.
Warren Buffett
We just focus on a few outstanding companies.
Warren Buffett
The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.
Warren Buffett
Our [investment] attitude fits our personalities and the way we want to live our lives.
Warren Buffett
A partner who is not subservient, who is himself extremely logical, is one of the best mechanisms you can have.
Warren Buffett
Look first for someone both smarter and wiser than you are. After locating him (or her) ask him not to flaunt his superiority so that you may enjoy acclaim for the many accomplishments that sprang from his thoughts and advice. Seek a partner who will never second-guess you nor sulk when you make expensive mistakes. Look also for a generous soul who will put up his own money and work for peanuts. Finally, join with someone who will constantly add to the fun as you travel a long road together.
Warren Buffett
Charlie can analyse and evaluate any kind of deal faster and more accurately than any man alive. He sees any valid weakness in 60 seconds. He is a perfect partner.
Warren Buffett
I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only twenty slots in it so that you had twenty punches – representing all the investments that you get to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all. Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did, and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you’d do so much better.
Warren Buffett
So we think in terms of that moat and the ability to keep its width and its impossibility of being crossed as the primary criterion of a great business. And we tell our managers we want the moat widened every year. That doesn’t necessarily mean the profit will be more this year than it was last year because it won’t be sometimes. However, if the moat is widened every year, the business will do very well. When we see a moat that’s tenuous in any way – it’s just too risky. We don’t know how to evaluate that. And, therefore, we leave it alone. We think that all of our businesses – or virtually all of our businesses – have pretty darned good moats. And we think the managers are widening them.
Warren Buffett
People always want a formula – but it doesn’t always work that way. You have to estimate total cash generated from now to eternity, and discount it back to today. Yardsticks such as P/E’s are not enough by themselves.
Warren Buffett
Charlie and I were introduced in 1959 by the Davis family. We were two personalities who tended towards dominance. Yet, we’ve never had an argument since.
Warren Buffett
We regard our [Insurance] float as a very significant asset.
Warren Buffett
We don’t get paid for being busy, we get paid for being right.
Warren Buffett
Change, as in the case of the internet, can be the friend of society. But it is in the absence of change that is often the friend of the investor. While the internet will change many things it will not likely change the brand of gum people chew. Charlie and I like stable businesses like chewing gum and try to leave life’s more unpredictable things to someone else.
Warren Buffett
The sign above the players’ entrance to the field at Notre Dame reads ‘Play like a champion today’. I sometimes joke that the sign at Nebraska reads ‘Remember your helmet’. Charlie and I are ‘Remember your helmet’ kind of guys. We like to keep it simple.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] You want to buy stock in a business that is so good because sooner or later an idiot will run it.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2012.] If you are going to be a net buyer of stocks in the future, either directly with your own money or indirectly (through your ownership of a company that is repurchasing shares), you are hurt when stocks rise. You benefit when stocks swoon. Emotions, however too often complicate the matter: Most people, including those who will be net buyers in the future, take comfort in seeing stock prices advance. These shareholders resemble a commuter who rejoices after the price of gas increases, simply because his tank contains a day’s supply.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2014] Insurance is the sale of promises.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2014] A climate of fear is your friend when investing; a euphoric world is your enemy. When Charlie and I buy stocks – which we think of as small portions of businesses – our analysis is very similar to that which we use in buying entire businesses. We first have to decide whether we can sensibly estimate an earnings range for five years out, or more. If the answer is yes, we will buy the stock (or business) if it sells at a reasonable price in relation to the bottom boundary of our estimate. If, however, we lack the ability to estimate future earnings – which is usually the case – we simply move on to other prospects. In the 54 years we have worked together, we have never foregone 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
[In February 2015.] If horses had controlled investment decisions, there would have been no auto industry.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2015.] Market forecasters will fill your ear but will never fill your wallet.
Warren Buffett
[In May 1985 on testing the microphone (Testing one, two, three).] One million, two million, three million.
Warren Buffett
[On Mrs B. (Rose Blumkin)] If she ran a popcorn stand, I’d want to be in business with her.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] Charlie says we have three boxes: In, Out and Too Hard. You don’t have to do everything well. At the Olympics, if you run the 100 meters well, you don’t have to do the shot put. Tom Watson [the founder of IBM] said, ‘I’m no genius. I’m smart in spots and I stay around those spots.’
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] You didn’t have to have a high IQ or a lot of investment smarts to buy junk bonds in 2002, or certain other things after Long-Term Capital Management blew up. You just had to have the courage of your convictions and the willingness to act when everyone else was terrified and paralyzed. The lesson of following logic rather than emotion is obvious, but some people can follow it and some can’t.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] Ben Graham said you’re neither right nor wrong if you’re investing with the crowd – you’re right if your facts and reasoning are right. Once you have the facts, you have to think about what they mean. You don’t take a survey.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] You should focus on what’s important and knowable. There are many things that are important but now knowable, like a nuclear attack tomorrow. You can’t focus on those.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] Dumb lending always has its consequences... A developer will build anything he can get financing for.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] We’ve had a real bubble to some degree. I would be surprised if there aren’t some significant downward adjustments, especially in the higher end of the housing market.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2006.] If your wife is going to have a baby, you’d be better to call an obstetrician than do it yourself. If your pipes leak, you should call a plumber. Most professions add value beyond what the average person can do for themselves. But in aggregate, the investment profession does not do this - despite $140 billion in total annual compensation. It’s hard to think of another business like that.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007 on them looking for an investment manager.] We’re looking for someone who doesn’t only learn from things that have happened, but can also envision things that have never happened… Many people are very smart, but are not wired to think about things that haven’t happened before.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] In 1998, Long Term Capital Management blew up and you had a seize-up of the credit markets that was not orchestrated by the Fed. People panicked about even the safest instruments. This happened not 100 years ago but less than 10 years ago. There were plenty of smart people with a lot of money, but people panicked in part because they saw others panicking. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. We’ll have something that rhymes…
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007 and Warren Buffett being on executive compensation and participating in compensation committees for companies.] I’ve been on 19 boards and they put me
on one comp committee – and they regretted it. They’re looking for cocker spaniels, not dobermans. I try to pretend I’m a cocker spaniel, but nobody’s fooled.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007 on executive compensation.] Compensation is not rocket science. We have very simple systems to compensate our people. We don’t make it complicated. We don’t pay them for things that are happening that they have nothing to do with.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] Corporate America is living in a great time. History shows this is not sustainable.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] Day trading comes very close to gambling. People like to gamble… People will always want to gamble.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007 on how he taught his children about the negatives of gambling.] I bought a slot machine a long time ago and put it on the 3rd floor of my house. I could then give my children any allowance they wanted, as long as it was in dimes, and I’d have it all back by nightfall. I wanted to teach them a good lesson. My slot machine had a terrible payout ratio, by the way.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] Gambling is a tax on ignorance.
Warren Buffett
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