Buffett Quotes

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

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

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

Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful

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.

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.

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

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.

We both (Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett) insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think.

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

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.

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

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

Rule No. 1 : Never lose money. Rule No. 2 : Never forget Rule No. 1.

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.

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

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

I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead.

Breathe in, breathe out, move on...

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

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

Wrinkles will only go where the smiles have been.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than to see the bad.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

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

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?

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

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

It's a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.

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

One of the inescapable encumbrances of leading an interesting life is that there have to be moments when you almost lose it.

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.

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

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.

Some of it's magic and some of it's tragic but I had a good life all the way.

I know a girl made of memories and phrases, lives her whole life in chapters and phases...

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

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

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.

Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.

If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.

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

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

You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.

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.

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.

Shells sink, dreams float. Life's good on our boat.

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

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

If the phone doesn't ring, it's me.

I'm growing older, but not up.

Pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip!

The lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual.

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

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

Mother Mother Ocean, I have heard your call.

H is for Habit, winners make a habit of doing the things losers don't want to do.

Oh, yesterdays are over my shoulder, So I can't look back for too long. There's just too much to see waiting in front of me, and I know that I just can't go wrong.

It's not the tales of Stephen King that I've read, I need protection from the things in my head . . .

The most important investment you can make is in yourself.

Surrounded by stories surreal and sublime, I fell in Love in the Library once upon a time.

Buffett found it 'extraordinary' that academics studied such things. They studied what was measurable, rather than what was meaningful. 'As a friend [Charlie Munger] said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Yes, I am a pirate two hundred years too late.

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

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

Where it all ends I can't fathom, my friends. If I knew, I might toss out my anchor.

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

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

Life is more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.

Some people never find it Some only pretend But I just want to live Happily ever after, now and then

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

If life gives you limes make margaritas.

Some of its magic, some its tragic, but I've had a good life along the way.

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

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

later down the road of life, i made the discovery that salt water was also good for the mental abrasions one inevitably acquires on land.

I am not a businessman, I am an artist

[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.

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

Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

Maybe there is another who sees life not as a flickering candle but as a torch that can illuminate an undiscovered world.

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

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

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

There will always be those who feel more comfortable not venturing from the warmth of the hearth, but there are those who prefer to look out the window and wonder what is beyond the horizon.

We need more fruitcakes in this world, and less bakers!

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

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

The weather is here Wish you were beautiful.

Just do it! First you make your habits, then your habits make you!

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

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.

It didn't matter how big our house was; it mattered that there was love in it.

1. Never forget--"they" are always the enemy. 2. Just remember, assholes are born that way, and they usually don't change. 3. You don't want to go to jail. 4. When you start to take this job seriously, you're in trouble. 5. It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad. 6. If you decide to run the ball, just count on fumbling and getting the shit knocked out of you a lot, but never forget how much fun it is just to be able to run the ball!

So smile when you read a headline that says “Investors lose as market falls.” Edit it in your mind to “Disinvestors lose as market falls—but investors gain.” Though writers often forget this truism, there is a buyer for every seller and what hurts one necessarily helps the other. (As they say in golf matches: “Every putt makes someone happy.”)

When I was sixteen, I had just two things on my mind - girls and cars. I wasn't very good with girls. So I thought about cars. I thought about girls, too, but I had more luck with cars. Let's say that when I turned sixteen, a genie had appeared to me. And that genie said, 'Warren, I'm going to give you the car of your choice. It'll be here tomorrow morning with a big bow tied on it. Brand-new. And it's all yours.' Having heard all the genie stories, I would say, 'What's the catch?' And the genie would answer, 'There's only one catch. This is the last car you're ever going to ge tin your life. So it's got to last a lifetime.' If that had happened, I would have picked out that car. But, can you imagine, knowing it had to last a lifetime, what I would do with it? I would read the manual about five times. I would always keep it garaged. If there was the least little dent or scratch, I'd have it fixed right away because I wouldn't want it rusting. I would baby that car, because it would have to last a lifetime. That's exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body. You only get one mind and one body. And it's got to last a lifetime. Now, it's very easy to let them ride for many years. But if you don't take care of that mind and that body, they'll be a wreck forty years later, just life the car would be. It's what you do right now, today, that determines how your mind and body will operate ten, twenty, and thirty years from now.

I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GDP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.

On me personally what has been the most important was to understand the value of time -- and this is something that has come from observing him, learning his story and that time compounds. What you do when you are young (and as you use time over your life) can have an exponential effect so that if you are thoughtful about it, you can really have powerful results later, if you want to. Also, that is a reason to be hopeful, because compounding is something that happens pretty quickly. If you are 50 or 60, it is not too late. He said to me one time, if there is something you really want to do, don't put it off until you are 70 years old. ... Do it now. Don't worry about how much it costs or things like that, because you are going to enjoy it now. You don't even know what your health will be like then. On the other hand, if you are investing in your education and you are learning, you should do that as early as you possibly can, because then it will have time to compound over the longest period. And that the things you do learn and invest in should be knowledge that is cumulative, so that the knowledge builds on itself. So instead of learning something that might become obsolete tomorrow, like some particular type of software [that no one even uses two years later], choose things that will make you smarter in 10 or 20 years. That lesson is something I use all the time now.