Buffett Quotes & Sayings

I come from the ocean with songs of the sea
No lesson for learning, just play upon me
Now go make your music in lands near and far
Orion protects you wherever you are — Jimmy Buffett

We intend to continue our practice of working only with people whom we like and admire. This policy not only maximizes our chances for good results, it also ensures us an extraordinarily good time. — Warren Buffett

Getting fired can produce a particularly bountiful payday for a CEO. Indeed, he can 'earn' more in that single day, while cleaning out his desk, than an American worker earns in a lifetime of cleaning toilets. Forget the old maxim about nothing succeeding like success: Today, in the executive suite, the all-too-prevalent rule is that nothing succeeds like failure. — Warren Buffett

I still believe in rock and roll, it pays my bills. — Jimmy Buffett

If it doesn't work out there will never be any doubt that the pleasure was worth all the pain. — Jimmy Buffett

Banking is very good business if you don't do anything dumb. — Warren Buffett

I would say that life at 84, I am having as much fun as I've ever had in my life. I mean I get to do what I love every day with the people I love-and it just doesn't get any better than that. — Warren Buffett

Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages. — Warren Buffett

It was too much Tequila, or not quite enough. — Jimmy Buffett

Well, I'm still here. Didn't have to go to rehab, and I'm not broke. — Jimmy Buffett

Either they're trying to con you or they're trying to con themselves. — Warren Buffett

Take the job you would take if you were independently wealthy. You're going to do well at it. — Warren Buffett

A newspaper that reduces its coverage of the news important to its community is certain to reduce its readership as well — Warren Buffett

Never lie under any circumstances. — Warren Buffett

Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich. — Warren Buffett

I've often felt there might be more to be gained by studying business failures than business successes. — Warren Buffett

I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit forming. — Warren Buffett

It doesn't take Warren Buffett to realize that when companies don't know what new rules will look like, it affects their ability to commit capital and create new jobs. — John Sununu

Don't settle for anything other than your passion - if you're lucky enough to find it. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) 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 livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements. — Warren Buffett

Doing good does not excuse us from doing better. — Howard Buffett

No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats. — Warren Buffett

With you, I would walk anywhere — Jimmy Buffett

Moderation is the key so I work certain amount of time and then I take a certain amount of time off. — Jimmy Buffett

It is better to point out your own mistakes than have somebody else do it. — Warren Buffett

In insurance, as elsewhere, the reaction of weak managements to weak operations is often weak accounting. ("It's difficult for an empty sack to stand upright.") — Warren Buffett

In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually. — Warren Buffett

Sound investing can make you very wealthy if you're not in too big a hurry — Warren Buffett

The world over, give a guy money and it goes to drinking, gambling, and women. When you give a woman money, it goes to feeding, clothing, helping people. — Peter Buffett

Unless your answers are clearly better, copy the answers of your betters. — Warren Buffett

And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them. — Jimmy Buffett

You get religion as your hair turns grey. — Jimmy Buffett

Mother Mother Ocean, I have heard your call. — Jimmy Buffett

Just look at that Forbes 400. Takes a billion three to get on the Forbes 400 this year. And the aggregate wealth is just staggering. And those people are paying less percentage of their total income to the federal government than their receptionists are [ ... ] I'll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges - me that the average for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists. — Warren Buffett

Over and over again, financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious, 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over, they ignobly fail, because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives, except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them. — Richard Dooling

Money is not everything. Make sure you earn a lot before speaking such nonsense. — Warren Buffett

We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet. — Warren Buffett

Stocks are the only thing that people are happy to buy when the price goes up. — Warren Buffett

I was suppose to be a Jesuit priest or a naval academy graduate. — Jimmy Buffett

You have no ability, if you're a financial institution and you're threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate. — Warren Buffett

The right combination of guilt and machismo has sent many a fool out into the jungle when he should have stayed home. — Jimmy Buffett

The idea that you try to time purchases based on what you think business is going to do in the next year or two, I think that's the greatest mistake investors make because it's always uncertain. People say it's a time of uncertainty. It was uncertain on September 10th, 2001, people just didn't know it. It's uncertain every single day. So take uncertainty as part of being involved in investment at all. But uncertainty can be your friend. I mean, when people are scared they pay less for things. We try to price. We don't try to time at all. — Warren Buffett

The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine. — Warren Buffett

The managers at fault periodically report on the lesson they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons. — Warren Buffett

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have their 'Giving Pledge,' where billionaires promise to give away the majority of their wealth when they die. My Social Security Pledge is better - to give money to good causes when you are alive. Besides, more Americans can participate. — Mark Skousen

If this is a war, my side has the nuclear bomb. We have K Street. We have Wall Street. Debbie doesn't have anybody. I want a government that is responsive to the people who got the short straw in life. — Warren Buffett

Trust is like the air we breathe
when it's present, nobody really notices; when it's absent, everybody notices. — Warren Buffett

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. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like. — Warren Buffett

A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere. — Warren Buffett

There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight. — Warren Buffett

But, surprise - none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist. — Warren Buffett

Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity. — Warren Buffett

I give away about 50 percent of my income, so my, you know, desire to give back to the country is pretty strong and I intend to give away a lot more. I've signed the giving pledge with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, and I intend to give away the bulk of my money. — David Rubenstein

If you want your business to survive for 100 years, you've got to make it through every single day for 100 years. It's not enough to do it 99.9% of the time. — Warren Buffett

Taking jobs to build up your resume is the same as saving up sex for old age. — Warren Buffett

The only question is whether you're going to do it today or tomorrow. If you keep saying you're going to do it tomorrow,
you'll never do it. You have to get on it today. — Warren Buffett

I can only say the first thing that pops into my mind is I remember, years ago, seeing kind of a has-been country singer working - when I first moved to Nashville - in a bar in a Holiday Inn. — Jimmy Buffett

Ignore the stock market, ignore the economy, and buy a business you understand. — Warren Buffett

If there's a heaven for me, I'm sure it has a beach attached. — Jimmy Buffett

My net worth is the market value of holdings less the tax payable upon sale. The liability is just as real as the asset unless the value of the asset declines (ouch), the asset is given away (no comment), or I die with it. The latter course of action would appear to at least border on a Pyrrhic victory. — Warren Buffett

Is management candid with the shareholders? — Warren Buffett

The power of unconditional love. I mean, there is no power on
earth like unconditional love. — Warren Buffett

To describe my scarce leisure time in today's terms, I always default to reading. — Jimmy Buffett

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it 'tap-dancing to work.' — Bill Gates

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

Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic, but I've had a good life all the way. — Jimmy Buffett

I never try to predict the market. — Warren Buffett

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill — Warren Buffett

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

Mirror that lies, mirror that lies, that can't be me in the gorilla disguise. — Jimmy Buffett

Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on. — Warren Buffett

Writing checks to the IRS that include strings of zeros does not bother me ... Overall, we feel extraordinarily lucky to have been dealt a hand in life that enables us to write large checks to the government rather than one requiring the government to regularly write checks to us-say, because we are disabled or unemployed. — Warren Buffett

In our view, though, investment students need only two well-taught courses-How to Value a Business, and How to Think about Market Prices. Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business who's earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. — Warren Buffett

My mother insisted that her children read. — Jimmy Buffett

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years. — Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett has said many times that people either get value investing in five minutes or they won't get it in five years. So, there is something in the human brain, that for some of us, makes all the difference in the world right away and the patience it requires is part of the wiring process. — Mohnish Pabrai

We don't get paid for being busy, we get paid for being right. — Warren Buffett

The inability of Americans to value intellect is, to me, maddening. If someone possesses physical beauty they will not be cloistered or hidden in dark shadows. No, they are expected to be a source of pleasing scenery to others. We are not frightened in this country by beauty. We celebrate it, as we should. But what about beautiful brains, the kind that create amazing worlds out of nothing but thoughts, that can find a way to intricately bond elements of our lives that common wisdom tells us are inert? Why should anyone hide this intellect ever? No. Fuck boring financiers like Warren Buffett...there is no such thing as unnecessary beauty, physical or intellectual. — Stuart Rojstaczer

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

It is more important to say "no" to an opportunity, than to say "yes". — Warren Buffett

Places I've lived since then had to have some kind of uniqueness and character about them. And logically Key West, and then Down Island. So, all of that stuff sort of had it's roots in New Orleans and went crazy. — Jimmy Buffett

Investment students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business and How to Think About Market Prices — Warren Buffett

We're weird roman candles burning bright at both ends. At the end of the road's where this story begins. Where the green of the gulf meets the blue of the sea. What makes it all happen is still a mystery to me. But those crazy days and those crazy ways, we never want to undo. We'll be together, now and forever. — Jimmy Buffett

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

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

Our leaders have asked for 'shared sacrifice.' But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. — Warren Buffett

We had the great depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. We had oil shock. We had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement in - there's never been any - I mean, you have centuries where if you've got a 1 percent improvement, then it's something. So we've got a great system. And we've got more productive capacity now than we ever have. — Howard Warren Buffett

For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated. — Warren Buffett

The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner. — Warren Buffett

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows. — Warren Buffett

You don't need to have extraordinary effort to achieve extraordinary results. You just need to do the ordinary, everyday things exceptionally well. — Warren Buffett

My rather puritanical view is that any investment manager, whether operating as broker, investment counselor of a trust department, investment company, etc., should be willing to state unequivocally what he is going to attempt to accomplish and how he proposes to measure the extent to which he gets the job done. — Warren Buffett

I don't read economic forecasts. I don't read the funny papers. — Warren Buffett

Never did I think that I became family entertainment. — Jimmy Buffett

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 — Warren Buffett

The Fed is the greatest hedge fund in history. — Warren Buffett

First come the innovators, then come the imitators, then come the idiots. — 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

The arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislature. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her saving in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation, or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leave her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 120 percent income tax, but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent. — Warren Buffett