Warren Buffett Decision Quotations

Outstanding long-term results are produced primarily by avoiding dumb decisions, rather than by making brilliant ones.

You’d get very rich if you thought of yourself as having a card with only twenty punches in a lifetime, and every financial decision used up one punch. You’d resist the temptation to dabble. You’d make more good decisions and you’d make more big decisions.

... but the important thing is that when you do find one where you really do know what you are doing, you must buy in quantity.... Charlie and I have made a dozen or so very big decisions relative to net worth, although not as big as they should have been. And in each of those, we've known that we were almost certain to be right going in.

My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.

Investment decision should be made on the basis of the most probable compounding of after-tax net worth with minimum risk.

We make investment decisions based on our evaluation of the most profitable combination of probabilities.

There is no question that an important service is provided to investors by investment companies, investment advisors, trust departments, etc. This service revolves around the attainment of adequate diversification, the preservation of a long-term outlook, the ease of handling investment decisions and mechanics, and most importantly, the avoidance of the patently inferior investment techniques which seem to entice some individuals.

It is obvious that the performance of a stock last year or last month is no reason, per se, to either own it or to not own it now. It is obvious that an inability to "get even" in a security that has declined is of no importance. It is obvious that the inner warm glow that results from having held a winner last year is of no importance in making a decision as to whether it belongs in an optimum portfolio this year.

We all make mistakes. If you can't make mistakes, you can't make decisions. I've made a lot bigger mistakes myself.

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

If you don't make mistakes you can't make decisions.

Good big decisions do not take time at all, if they do you are in trouble.

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.

If horses had controlled investment decisions, there would have been no auto industry.

To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. You must supply the emotional discipline.

The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power,