Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors in the world, and there is no better way to learn about investing than by reading Warren Buffett quotes. He has made billions of dollars through his investment strategies and has shared some of his wisdom with the rest of us.
In this article, we will take a look at some of Warren Buffett's most famous quotes. We will also explore his thoughts on investment, money, the stock market, and gold. So sit back and learn from the best.
Most famous Warren Buffett quotes
Warren Buffet's quotes are some of the most famous within the investing world. This is because his words are not only memorable but also because they hold a lot of weight and meaning. Here are some of his most notable ones:
1.“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
2.“Rule No. 1: never lose money; rule No. 2: don’t forget rule No. 1”
3.“Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.”
4.“The most important investment you can make is in yourself.”
5.“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price”
6.“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them because sooner or later, one will.”
7.“You cannot make a good deal with a bad person.”
Some key takeaways from these Warren Buffett quotes are to be fearful when others are greedy, to buy stock in wonderful companies, and to avoid doing business with bad people. These are all sage pieces of advice that can help you become a successful investor.
Warren Buffett quotes on investment
As an investor, reading these quotes from Warren Buffett will give you a better understanding of his investment philosophy. These lessons are fundamental to how he has become a successful stock market investor.
8.“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
9.“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.”
10.“The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.”
11.“Did I think See’s Candies could charge 20 cents a pound more for candy? Sure. And sure enough, they could. If you own See’s Candy, and look in the mirror and say, ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, how much do I charge for candy this fall?’ and it says, ‘More,’ it’s a good business.”
12.“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.”
13.“Your chairman made the decision a few years ago to purchase Waumbac Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire, thereby expanding our textile commitment. By any statistical test, the purchase was a statistical bargain; we bought well below the working capital of the business and, in effect, got very substantial amounts of machinery and real estate for less than nothing. But the purchase was a mistake. While we labored mightily, new problems arose as fast as old problems were tamed.”
14.“Beware the investment activity that produces applause; the great moves are usually greeted by yawns.”
15.“My biggest lost opportunity was probably Freddie Mac. We owned a savings and loan, and that entitled us to buy 1% of Freddie Mac stock when it first came out. We should have bought 100 S&Ls and loaded up on Freddie Mac. What was I doing? I was sucking my thumb. The biggest cause of this kind of mistake is that I stop buying when the stock starts moving up. I got so enamored of how cheap it was when I started buying that I stopped, and I have often folded by intent. I believe in loading up on these things. There wasn’t anyone who thought it was going to disappear.”
16.“The best way to think about investments is to be in a room with no one else and to just think. If that doesn’t work, nothing else is going to work.”
17.“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.”
18.“Never invest in a business you cannot understand.”
19.“If returns are going to be 7 or 8 percent and you’re paying 1 percent for fees, that makes an enormous difference in how much money you’re going to have in retirement.”
20.“I’ve observed that many acquisitions-hungry managers were apparently mesmerized by their childhood reading of the story about the frog-kissing pricess. Remembering her success, they pay dearly for the right to kiss corporate toads, expecting wondrous transfigurations. Ultimately, even the most optimistic manager must face reality. Standing knee-deep in unresponsive toads, he announces an enormous ‘restructuring’ charge. In this corporate equivalent of a Head Start program, the CEO receives the education but the stockholders pay the tuition.”
21."As in the case with marriage, business acquisitions often deliver surprise after the ‘I do’s.’”
22.“A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable problem.”
23.“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”
24.“In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.”
25.“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.”
26.“The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.”
27.“You need to divorce your mind from the crowd. The herd mentality causes all these IQs to become paralyzed. I don’t think investors are now acting more intelligently, despite the intelligence. Smart doesn’t always equal rational. To be a successful investor you must divorce yourself from the fears and greed of the people around you, although it is almost impossible.”
28.“The course of the stock market will largely determine when we’ll be right, but the accuracy of our analysis will determine whether we’ll be right. In other words, we concentrate on what should happen, not when it should happen. If we start deciding, based on our guesses and emotions, whether we will participate in a business where we have some long-run edge, we’re in trouble We will not sell out our interests in businesses when they are attractively priced just because some astrologer thinks the quotations may go even lower through forecasts. We’ll be right some of the time. The availability of a quotation for your business interests should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a liability whereby its periodic aberrations, in turn, form your judgments.”
29.“The three most important words in investing are margin of safety.”
30.“In the 54 years (Charlie Munger and I) 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.”
31.“On the margin of safety, which means, don’t try and drive a 9,800-pound truck over a bridge that says it’s, you know, capacity: 10,000 pounds. But go down the road a little bit and find one that says, capacity: 15,000 pounds.”
32.“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price, than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
33.“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.”
34.“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
35.“An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.”
36.“Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.’”
37.“The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.”
38.“Success in investing doesn’t correlate with IQ … what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.”
39.“40x earnings sounds like a very high price when you name it in terms of P/E to buy back stock at that kind of number. Still, it’s the best large business in the world. I approve of Coke’s repurchases. I’d rather them repurchase at 15x earnings, but it’s a very efficient way of using capital.”
40.“Widespread fear is your friend as an investor because it serves up bargain purchases.”
41.“The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
42.“It’s been an ideal period for investors: A climate of fear is their best friend. Those who invest only when commentators are upbeat end up paying a heavy price for meaningless reassurance.”
43.“I call investing the greatest business in the world … because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! and nobody calls a strike on you. There’s no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.”
44.“The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.”
45.“Stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: ‘Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth.’”
46.“You shouldn’t own common stocks if a 50% decrease in their value in a short period of time would cause you acute distress.”
47.“By the age of 10, I’d read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice. You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which makes sense. Then you have to jump in the water – take a small amount of money and do it yourself. Investing on paper is like reading a romance novel vs. doing something else. You’ll soon find out whether you like it. The earlier you start, the better.”
48.“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”
Takeaways from Warren Buffett quotes on investment
Some key takeaways from Warren Buffet's quotes on investing are to think long-term, be patient, and focused on finding companies with a competitive advantage.
It is also important to have the temperament to control your emotions when making investment decisions. Lastly, remember that stock prices can fluctuate and it is okay to buy when there is fear in the market. These are all important things to keep in mind when making any investment decisions.
Warren Buffett quotes on money
With an estimated net worth of over 125.6 billion USD, this legendary investor clearly knows a thing or two about money. Here are some of his most famous quotes on the subject:
49.“Money is not everything. Make sure you earn a lot before speaking such nonsense.”
50."You've got to understand accounting. You've got to. That's got to be like a language to you,"
51.“In my view, for most people, the best thing is to do is own the S&P 500 index fund. There are huge amounts of money people pay for advice they really don’t need.”
52.“Of the billionaires, I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”
53.“What counts for most people in investing vs saving is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don’t know.”
54.“Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.”
55.“Don sent me a trial sample of the formula for Cherry Coke very early on—and I loved it. I wrote him back saying he could save all his test-marketing money, send me a portion of what he’d spend otherwise, and that it was going to be a great success.”
56.“Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies.”
57.“When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients.”
58.“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.”
59.“For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”
60.“Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
61.“Writing a check separates a commitment from a conversation.”
62.“The most common cause of low prices is pessimism—sometimes pervasive, sometimes specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It’s optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.”
63.“Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.”
64.“I’m not interested in cars and my goal is not to make people envious. Don’t confuse the cost of living with the standard of living.”
65.“Do not save what is left after spending; instead spend what is left after saving.”
66.“If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.”
67.“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, 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.”
68.“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.”
To summarize Warren Buffet's philosophies on money are:
- It is better to invest than save
- Money brings out people's true traits
- Do not overspend or be materialistic
- Give to charity
- Be patient with investments
All in all, Mr. Buffett seems to advocate for a balanced and modest lifestyle despite having great wealth. What matters most to him is not the superficial things that money can buy, but rather how people use their money to better society as a whole. We could all learn a thing or two from his simple yet powerful quotes!
Warren Buffett quotes on stock market impatience
Many of Warren Buffet's teachings emphasize the importance of patience in the stock market. By being patient, investors can avoid making rash decisions that might not pan out in the long run. Here are some of his best quotes on stock market impatience:
69.“Remember that the stock market is a manic depressive.”
70.“Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.”
71.“The sillier the market’s behavior, the greater the opportunity for the businesslike investor.”
72.“The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.”
73.“If you aren’t thinking about owning a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”
74.“Every decade or so, dark clouds will fill the economic skies, and they will briefly rain gold.”
75.“When someone builds a business, they’re building their own masterpiece. If we purchased that painting, we’re offering to hang it, not buy it, and quickly sell it to someone else. I tell a prospective seller they can choose to hand it over to Berkshire where I will never tell them to add more blue paint or less red paint, but simply hang it. Consider Berkshire the Metropolitan Museum. Your alternative is to hang it in a porn shop.”
76.“We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.”
77.“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.”
78.“The best chance to deploy capital is when things are going down.”
79."American magic has always prevailed, and it will do so again."
The key lessons from Warren Buffett quotes about stock market impatience
- The stock market is cyclical and will always rebound eventually
- There is an opportunity to make money when the market is down
- Buying stocks when they are low is key to making a profit in the long run
- Don't listen to stock market predictions, focus on the companies you are investing in instead.
Warren Buffett believes impatience in the stock markets is dangerous for an investor. Those that are patient and bide their time waiting for the perfect moment to buy will be rewarded in the end. Those who panic and sell at the first sign of trouble will end up losing money.
Warren Buffett quotes on gold
Gold is a commodity that has long been seen as a safe haven investment. When the stock market is in turmoil, investors often turn to gold as a way to preserve their wealth.
However, these Warren Buffett quotes might make you think twice about allocating capital to this commodity. Here are Warren Buffet's quotes on gold:
80.“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.”
81.“The problem with commodities is that you are betting on what someone else would pay for them in six months. The commodity itself isn’t going to do anything for you….it is an entirely different game to buy a lump of something and hope that somebody else pays you more for that lump two years from now than it is to buy something that you expect to produce income for you over time.”
82.“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."
83.“I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67-foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils.”
84.“The major asset in this category is gold, currently a huge favorite of investors who fear almost all other assets, especially paper money (of whose value, as noted, they are right to be fearful). Gold, however, has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. True, gold has some industrial and decorative utility, but the demand for these purposes is both limited and incapable of soaking up new production. Meanwhile, if you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce at its end.”
85.“What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade, that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth — for a while."
86.“I have no views as to where it will be (gold), but the one thing I can tell you is it won’t do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money and there will be a lot — and it’s a lot — it’s a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that."
Conclusions from Warren Buffett quotes on gold
It's clear that Warren Buffett is not a fan of gold. This is because gold does not produce anything and it is only worth what somebody else is willing to pay for it. Gold is a bet that others will pay more for it.
Warren Buffett believes that there are better investments than gold, such as stocks and farmland. Therefore, investors should not put all their money into gold.
Warren Buffett quotes on time
Time is something we all have, but we often do not use it wisely. It is also one of our most scarce assets. Investors tend to only consider the return on their investments but should also consider their own return on invested time.
Warren Buffett has shared his timeless wisdom for decades that we can all learn from. Here are Warren Buffett's quotes on time:
87.“If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.”
88.“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.”
89.“Business management can be viewed as a three-act play—the dream, the execution, and the passing of the baton.”
90.“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.”
91.“Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.”
92.“We’re going to have something in the way of a major nuclear event in this country whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes or 50 years…it’s a virtual certainty.”
93.“Charlie and I would follow a buy-and-hold policy even if we ran a tax-exempt institution.”
94.“We find it’s hard to teach a young dog old tricks. But we haven’t had lots of problems with people who hit the ball out of the park year after year. Even though they’re rich, they love what they do. And nothing ever happens to our managers. We try to offer them immortality.”
95.“Don’t pass up something that’s attractive today because you think you will find something better tomorrow.”
96.“Today is significantly different from the 1950s. Back then there was less disclosure, but the disclosure you had was accurate. In the 1960s you started to have more games being played. Conglomerates were trying to pump up their stock to use as currency in takeovers, but old-line America didn’t do it. It was still the good guys vs. the bad guys. It’s not like today, where too often otherwise high-grade companies start with a number for quarterly earnings and work backward. Situational ethics has reared its ugly head.”
97.“Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.”
98.“If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.”
99.“The years ahead will occasionally deliver major market declines — even panics — that will affect virtually all stocks. No one can tell you when these traumas will occur.”
100.“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
101.“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”
102.“I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.”
103.“Successful investing takes time, discipline, and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”
104.“Calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.”
105.“Our favorite holding period is forever.”
106.“Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.”
107.“Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.”
108.“Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.”
109.“Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.”
110.“The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.”
111.“If I can’t understand the accounting, someone doesn’t want me to.”
Warren Buffet's quotes about time show that he is a long-term thinker and investor. He talks about how important it is to have a plan and to think things through before making decisions.
He also says that today is different from the past when companies were more honest and straightforward.
Buffett also gives advice about what to do during market crashes - hold on to your investments and don't sell. Finally, he emphasizes the importance of understanding what you're buying, and not just following the crowd.
In summary, Warren Buffett's quotes suggest that it is important to be patient, think long-term, and do your own research before investing. These are sage words of advice from one of the most successful investors of all time.
Warren Buffett quotes on life
The 'Oracle of Omaha' consistently shares sage advice on life in general. His perceptions and insights are what have made him one of the most respected and loved business leaders in the world. Here's a compilation of some of his best quotes on life:
112.“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.”
113."Fear is the most contagious disease you can imagine. It makes the virus look like a piker."
114.“Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.”
115.“A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse—not a remarkable mathematician.”
116.“When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits.”
117.“The best thing is to learn from other guys’ mistakes. [General George S.] Patton used to say,
118.“Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it’s the lack of change that appeals to me.”
119.“I believe in giving my kids enough so they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.”
120.“Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.”
121.“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
122“In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.”
123.“Those who think about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite riddles. How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.”
124.“The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.”
125.“Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.”
126.“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
127.“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.”
128.“The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.”
129.“The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”
130.“I had a great teacher in life, my father. But I had another great teacher in terms of the profession in terms of Ben Graham. I was lucky enough to get the right foundation very early on. And then basically I didn’t listen to anybody else. I just look in the mirror every morning and the mirror always agrees with me. And I go out and do what I believe I should be doing. And I’m not influenced by what other people think.”
131.“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”
132.“What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”
133.“There is nothing wrong with a ‘know nothing’ investor who realizes it. The problem is when you are a ‘know nothing’ investor but you think you know something.”
134.“Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.”
135.“If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.”
136.“In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.”
137.“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”
138.“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.”
139.“…not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.”
140.“Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.”
141.“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
142.“For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”
143.“You know… you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.”
144.“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.”
145.“I won’t say if my candidate doesn’t win, and probably half the time they haven’t, I’m going to take my ball and go home.”
146.“After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie [Munger] and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.”
147.“Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick “no.”
148.“Predicting rain doesn’t count. Building arks does.”
149.“You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.”
150.“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.”
151.“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”
152.“Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.”
153.“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
154.“If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%.”
155.“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
156.“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.”
157.“One can best prepare themselves for the economic future by investing in your own education. If you study hard and learn at a young age, you will be in the best circumstances to secure your future.”
158.“Imagine that you had a car and that was the only car you’d have for your entire lifetime. Of course, you’d care for it well, changing the oil more frequently than necessary, driving carefully, etc. Now, consider that you only have one mind and one body. Prepare them for life, care for them. You can enhance your mind over time. A person’s main asset is themselves, so preserve and enhance yourself.”
159.“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.”
160.“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”
161.“Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.”
162.“Talking to Time Magazine a few years back, Peter Drucker got to the heart of things: ‘I will tell you a secret: Dealmaking beats working. Dealmaking is exciting and fun, and working is grubby. Running anything is primarily an enormous amount of grubby detail work . . . dealmaking is romantic, sexy. That’s why you have deals that make no sense.’”
163.“Culture, more than rule books, determines how an organization behaves.”
164.“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.”
165.“I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire.”
166.“Never give up searching for the job that you are passionate about”
167.“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?”
168.“Intensity is the price of excellence.”
169.“I have every possession I want. I have a lot of friends who have a lot more possessions. But in some cases, I feel the possession possesses them, rather than the other way around.”
170.“If you want to be loved, it’s clearly better to sell high-priced corn flakes than low-priced auto insurance.”
171.“It’s an honor to die for your country; make sure the other guy gets the honor.” There are a lot of mistakes that I’ve repeated. The biggest one, the biggest category over time, is being reluctant to pay up a little for a business that I knew was really outstanding.”
Warren Buffett’s views on life
Warren Buffett isn't just wise about investing, but also gives insightful life advice. Some key things to learn from these quotes are that it is important to be honest, work hard, and focus on what is important to you. Additionally, it is essential to take care of yourself and always continue learning. These are valuable lessons that can be applied to many aspects of life, not just investing.
Warren Buffett quotes about risk-taking
There will always be a certain degree of risk when investing in the stock market. Whether it be from an economic recession or a natural disaster, many factors can contribute to a stock market crash.
However, learning about Warren Buffet's quotes about risks can help investors reduce their probability of making a mistake. Here are some of his most famous quotes on the topic:
172.“Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing.”
173.“When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”
174.“It is a terrible mistake for investors with long-term horizons — among them pension funds, college endowments, and savings-minded individuals — to measure their investment ‘risk’ by their portfolio’s ratio of bonds to stocks.”
175.“I’ve seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage – leverage being borrowed money. You really don’t need leverage in this world much. If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.”
176.“The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything — you can wait for your pitch.”
177.“It’s better to have a partial interest in the Hope diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.”
178.“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.”
179.“Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.”
180.“We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.”
181.“Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.”
182.“We make no attempt to pick the few winners that will emerge from an ocean of unproven enterprises. We’re not smart enough to do that, and we know it. 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.”
183.“Half of all coin-flippers will win their first toss; none of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game.”
184.“Keep all your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket closely.”
185.“We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as “the possibility of loss or injury.”
186.“But a pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street — a community in which quality control is not prized — will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.”
187.“Going short is betting on something that’ll happen. If you go short for meaningful amounts, you can go broke. If something is selling for twice what it’s worth, what’s to stop it from selling for 10 times what it’s worth? You’ll be right eventually, but you may be explaining it to somebody in the poorhouse.”
188.“You’re dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it’s like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O.K.”
189.“If you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy.”
190.“Just buy something for less than it’s worth.”
Lessons from Warren Buffett quotes on risk
These Warren Buffett quotes show that he is not a supporter of taking risks. This is because he feels that most people do not know what they are doing when it comes to investments and the stock market. He cautions against speculation as it is often harder than it looks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, these Warren Buffett's quotes show that he is a very experienced and successful investor who has a lot of wisdom to share. For anyone looking to get into investing, these quotes provide some valuable insights. Feel free to share this article with anyone who might find it helpful!
Make sure to bookmark and save this article as a way to access wisdom from the greatest investor of all-time - Warren Buffett! For more great advice, be sure to check out our other articles on quotes from famous investors:
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