Buffett Investing Quotes & Sayings

Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up. — Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett once wrote that value investing is like an inoculation
it either takes or it doesn't
and when you explain to somebody what it is and how it works and why it works and show them the returns, either they get it or they don't. — Seth Klarman

I knew a lot about what I did when I was 20. I had read a lot, and I aspired to learn everything I could about the subject. — Warren Buffett

Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are. — Warren Buffett

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise. — Warren Buffett

Buffett's uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street
a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American. — Roger Lowenstein

Our marketable equities tell us by their operating results - not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations - whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it. — Warren Buffett

We will only do with your money what we would do with our own. — Warren Buffett

The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable. — Warren Buffett

Anything can happen in stock markets and you ought to conduct your affairs so that if the most extraordinary events happen, that you're still around to play the next day. — Warren Buffett

Does the business have favourable long term prospects? — Warren Buffett

Never invest in a business you can't understand — Warren Buffett

Traditional wisdom is long on tradition and short on wisdom. — Warren Buffett

Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive. — Warren Buffett

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you. — Warren Buffett

In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard. — Warren Buffett

Buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn't work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn't going to work either. — Warren Buffett

Investors ... can't pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There's only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping. — Warren Buffett

Valuing a business is part art and part science. — Warren Buffett

If you expect to continue to purchase stocks throughout your life, you should welcome price declines as a way to add stocks more cheaply to your portfolio. — Warren Buffett

I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year. — Warren Buffett

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

You shouldn't own common stocks if a 50 per cent decrease in their value in a short period of time would cause you acute distress. — Warren Buffett

The greatest Enemies of the Equity investor are Expenses and Emotions. — Warren Buffett

If you can eliminate the government as a 39.6% partner, then you will be much better off. — Warren Buffett

We would do best in a market where everyone acted foolishly. — Warren Buffett

Anything can happen anytime in markets. And no advisor, economist, or TV commentator-and definitely not Charlie nor I-can tell you when chaos will occur. Market forecasters will fill your ear but will never fill your wallet. — Warren Buffett

Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men. If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases. — Warren Buffett

Cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless. — Warren Buffett

We say we are trying to buy into businesses with excellent economics, run by honest and able people at a decent price. We buy very few securities, so we look at it as "focused" investing. — Warren Buffett

The best education you can get is investing in yourself, and that doesn't mean college or university. — Warren Buffett

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

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. — Warren Buffett

I do not like debt and do not like to invest in companies that have too much debt, particularly long-term debt. With long-term debt, increases in interest rates can drastically affect company profits and make future cash flows less predictable. — Warren Buffett

As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it. — Warren Buffett

I don't measure my life by the money I've made. Other people might, but certainly don't. — Warren Buffett

All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies. — Warren Buffett

As Buffett has often observed, value investing is not a concept that can be learned and gradually applied over time. It is either absorbed and adopted at once, or it is never truly learned. — Seth Klarman

Enjoy your work and work for whom you admire. — Warren Buffett

If you invested in a very low cost index fund - where you don't put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years -you'll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable. — Warren Buffett

Investing in a market where people believe in efficiency is like playing bridge with someone who has been told it doesn't do any good to look at the cards. — Warren Buffett

There are a few investment managers, of course, who are very good - though in the short run, it's difficult to determine whether a great record is due to luck or talent. Most advisors, however, are far better at generating high fees than they are at generating high returns. In truth, their core competence is salesmanship. Rather than listen to their siren songs, investors - large and small - should instead read Jack Bogle's The Little Book of Common Sense Investing. — Warren Buffett

If you have more than 120 or 130 I.Q. points, you can afford to give the rest away. You don't need extraordinary intelligence to succeed as an investor. — Warren Buffett

Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior. — Warren Buffett

What's nice about investing is you don't have to swing at every pitch. — Warren Buffett

You could be somewhere where the mail was delayed three weeks and do just fine investing. — Warren Buffett

If you know how to value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into #30 or #35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness. — Warren Buffett

When Berkshire buys common stock, we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business. — Warren Buffett

Investing requires qualities of temperament way more than it requires qualities of intellect. — Warren Buffett

Right at the core, the mainstream has it backwards. Warren Buffett often quips that the first rule of investing is to not lose money, and the second rule is to not forget the first rule. Yet few investors approach the world with such a strict standard of risk avoidance. — Seth Klarman

Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own. — Warren Buffett

Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date. — Warren Buffett

When you build a bridge, you insist that it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000-pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing. — Warren Buffett

Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. Once you are above the level of 25; once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing. — Warren Buffett

It's not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Buffett's methodology was straightforward, and in that sense 'simple.' It was not simple in the sense of being easy to execute. Valuing companies such as Coca-Cola took a wisdom forged by years of experience; even then, there was a highly subjective element. A Berkshire stockholder once complained that there were no more franchises like Coca-Cola left. Munger tartly rebuked him. 'Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well two or three times, will make your family rich for life? — Roger Lowenstein

With enough insider information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year. — Warren Buffett

We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own assets. — Warren Buffett

Investing is simple, but not easy. — Warren Buffett

Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. — Warren Buffett

In the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth. — Warren Buffett

If you own a wonderful business ... the best thing to do is keep it. All you're going to do is trade your wonderful business for a whole bunch of cash, which isn't as good as the business, and you got the problem of investing in other businesses, and you probably paid a tax in between. So my advice to anybody who owns a wonderful business is keep it. — Warren Buffett

When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it. — Howard Warren Buffett

I think you should read everything you can. In my case, 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 make sense. — Warren Buffett

We like to buy businesses, but we don't like to sell them. — Warren Buffett

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

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

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

Is management candid with the shareholders? — Warren Buffett

The three most important words in investing ... Margin of Safety. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves your own talents; nobody can tax it or take it away from you. They can run up huge deficits and the dollar can become worth far less. You can have all kinds of things happen. But if you've got talent yourself, and you've maximized your talent, you've got a tremendous asset that can return ten-fold. — Warren Buffett

I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want. — 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

Does management resist the institutional imperative? — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results. — Warren Buffett

We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good. — Warren Buffett

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish. — Warren Buffett

When they get their ego involved, people do things they shouldn't do. — Warren Buffett

When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: 'we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year. — Warren Buffett

Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future. — Warren Buffett

In a commodity business, it's very hard to be smarter than your dumbest competitor. — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

We need a moderately-priced stock market ... The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do. 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. — Warren Buffett

By periodically investing in an index fund, the know-nothing investors can actually outperform most investment professionals. — Warren Buffett

When the brothel burns down, even the pretty girls have to run out. — Warren Buffett

An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes. — Warren Buffett

The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. — Warren Buffett

We really can say no in 10 seconds or so to 90%+ of all the things that come along simply because we have these filters. — Warren Buffett

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. — Warren Buffett

It's us fun being a gorse when the tractor comes along, or the blacksmith when the car comes along. — Warren Buffett