Warren Buffett Quotes
376 Warren Buffett Quotes
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[In May 2007.] We want to buy a great business, defined as having a high return on capital for a long period of time, where we think management will treat us right. We like to buy at 40 cents on the dollar, but will pay a lot closer to $1 on the dollar for a
great business.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] The math of investing was set out by Aesop in 600 BC: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We ask ourselves how certain we are about birds in the bush. Are there really two? Might there be more? We simply choose which bushes we want to buy from in the future.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007 on paper trading.] Investing on paper is like reading a romance novel versus doing something else. You’ll soon find out whether you like it.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] If I know I have something that yields 8% for sure, and something else came along at 7%, I’d reject it instantly. It’s like the mail-order-bride firm offering a bride who has AIDS – I don’t need to waste a moment considering it. Everything is a function of opportunity cost.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] Volatility does not measure risk. The problem is that the people who have written about and taught volatility do not understand risk. Beta is nice and mathematical, but it’s wrong. Past volatility does not determine risk… Risk comes from the nature of certain kinds of businesses by the simple economics of the business, and from not knowing what you’re doing. If you understand the economics and you know the people, then you’re not taking much risk.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] I tried 20 different businesses by the time I got out of high school. The best was a pinball-machine business, but I wouldn’t recommend it now… Look for what people don’t want to do for themselves.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2007.] I saw a study that correlated business success with a range of variables like grades, parents, whether one attended business school – and they found it correlated best with the age at which you first started in business.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] I started investing when I was 11. I believe in reading everything in sight. I wandered around for 8 years with technical analysis. I read The Intelligent Investor, chapters 8 and 20 I recommend the most, and if you absorb it you won’t be a lemming. I read it early in 1950, and I think it’s as good a book now as then. You can’t get a bad result if you follow it.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] The Intelligent Investor has three big lessons: (1) think of a stock as a part ownership of a business; (2) the market is there to serve you, not instruct you; and (3) always require a margin of safety.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] We buy businesses with great management in place. We have seen their record. They come with the business. Our job is not to select great managers; our job is to retain them.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008 on
Rose Blumkin and working for as long as you can (as long as it is your passion).] Mrs. B worked until she was 103, then died the next year. That’s a good lesson for our managers.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] We never want to trade reputation for money.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] There is no reason to look at the minuses in life. It would be crazy. We count our blessings. Not much more to it than that.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] You have to find your passion in life.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] The more you learn, the more you want to learn. It is fun.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] We want a company with a durable advantage, which we can understand, a management we can trust, at a good price.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] You need to live a life that is true to yourself.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] I am Chief Risk Officer at Berkshire. If something goes wrong, I cannot assign it to a committee.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] A brand is a promise.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] Just imagine you are 16 and your parents are going to give you the car of your choice. But the catch is that it is the only car you would get for the rest of your life. How would you choose to proceed? Of course, you will read the manual 5 times. How would you treat it? You’ll keep it garaged, change the oil twice as frequently as you’re supposed to, and keep rust to a minimum because you know it needs to last a lifetime. I tell students that you get only one body and one mind. You’d better treat them the same way. It’s hard to change habits at age 50 or 60. Anything students do to invest in body and mind is good, particularly in the mind.
[In May 2008.] The best asset is your own self.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008 on past blowups.] Trouble in one area has a way of spreading to another area.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] The most important job you have is to be the teacher to your children. You are the big, great thing to them. You don’t get a rewind button. You don’t get to do it twice. Teach by what you do, not what you say. By the time they get through formal school, they would have learned more from you than from school… You teach with what you do, not what you say.
Warren Buffett
[In May 2008.] If you keep reading books, you’ll learn a lot. If you read 20 books, you can learn a h*ll of a lot.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009 on borrowers who shouldn’t have borrowed being financed by lenders who shouldn’t have lent.] This 1997-2000 fiasco should have served as a canary-in-the-coal-mine warning for the far-larger conventional housing market. But investors, government and rating agencies learned exactly nothing from the manufactured-home debacle. Instead, in an eerie rerun of that disaster, the same mistakes were repeated with conventional homes in the 2004-07 period: Lenders happily made loans that borrowers couldn’t repay out of their incomes, and borrowers just as happily signed up to meet those payments. Both parties counted on ‘house-price appreciation’ to make this otherwise impossible arrangement work. It was Scarlett O’Hara all over again: ‘I’ll think about it tomorrow.’
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] 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 symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] When the financial history of this decade is written, it will surely speak of the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the early 2000s. But the U.S. Treasury bond bubble of late 2008 may be regarded as almost equally extraordinary.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2009.] Derivatives are dangerous.
Warren Buffett
[In June 2009 on how it takes time for an economy and jobs to come back despite significant action on the government side.] You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant. It just doesn’t work that way.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2010.] Charlie and I avoid businesses whose futures we can’t evaluate, no matter how exciting their products may be. In the past, it required no brilliance for people to foresee the fabulous growth that awaited such industries as autos (in 1910), aircraft (in 1930) and television sets (in 1950). But the future then also included competitive dynamics that would decimate almost all of the companies entering those industries. Even the survivors tended to come away bleeding.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2010.] People thought it was good news a few years back when housing starts – the supply side of the picture – were running about two million annually. But household formations – the demand side – only amounted to about 1.2 million. After a few years of such imbalances, the country unsurprisingly ended up with far too many houses.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2010.] Charlie and I believe that a CEO must not delegate risk control. It’s simply too important.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2010.] Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2011.] Money will always flow toward opportunity…
Warren Buffett
[In February 2011.] No matter how serene today may be, tomorrow is always uncertain. Don’t let that reality spook you.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2011.] Most companies limit themselves to reinvesting funds within the industry in which they have been operating. That often restricts them, however, to a ‘universe’ for capital allocation that is both tiny and quite inferior to what is available in the wider world. Competition for the few opportunities that are available tends to become fierce. The seller has the upper hand, as a girl might if she were the only female at a party attended by many boys. That lopsided situation would be great for the girl, but terrible for the boys.
Warren Buffett
[In February 2011.] In businesses, culture counts… Bureaucratic procedures beget more bureaucracy, and imperial corporate palaces induce imperious behavior.
Warren Buffett
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