W Buffett Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Never lie under any circumstances. — 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

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

Is management candid with the shareholders? — Warren 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

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

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

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill — 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

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

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

[W]e think the very term 'value investing' is redundant. What is 'investing' if it is not the act of seeking value at least sufficient to justify the amount paid? Consciously paying more for a stock than its calculated value
in the hope that it can soon be sold for a still-higher price
should be labeled speculation (which is neither illegal, immoral nor
in our view
financially fattening). — Warren Buffett

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. — Warren Buffett

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

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

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

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