Warren Buffett Investing Quotations

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.

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

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.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

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.

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.

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.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

An educational approach to money and investing struck me as a very good idea. People do form behavior habits very young on matters of money. I get calls every day from people who are in a financial hole.

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.

We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.

If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.

Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time.

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

Never invest in a business you can't understand

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

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.

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.

Many stock options in the corporate world have worked in exactly that fashion: they have gained in value simply because management retained earnings, not because it did well with the capital in its hands.

Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. If you've got talents, no one can take them from you.

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

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

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

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

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

I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

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

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.

Look for companies with high profit margins.

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

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

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.

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

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.

Does the business have favourable long term prospects?

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.

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.

Turnarounds seldom turn.

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.

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.

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

Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.

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

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.

When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.

When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

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

Investing is simple, but not easy.

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.

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

One of the ironies of the stock market is the emphasis on activity. Brokers, using terms such as 'marketability' and 'liquidity,' sing the praises of companies with high share turnover... but investors should understand that what is good for the croupier is not good for the customer. A hyperactive stock market is the pick pocket of enterprise.

... it's important to have the right monetary policy. It's important for, to have the right fiscal policy. But it's nowhere near as important as just the normal regenerative capacity of American capitalism.

Well, one time some attractive woman sat next to Charlie and asked him what he owed his success to, and, unfortunately, she insisted on a one word answer. He had a speech prepared that would have gone on for several hours. But when forced to boil it down to one word, he said that was "rational". You know, he comes equipped for rationality, and he applies it in business. He doesn't always apply it elsewhere, but he applies it in business and that has made him a huge business success.

Traditional wisdom is long on tradition and short on wisdom.

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you.

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.

The three most important words in investing...Margin of Safety.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Investing requires qualities of temperament way more than it requires qualities of intellect.

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.

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

Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing.

Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.

I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that ...I'm paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because... If you can't answer that question, you shouldn't buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you'll make a lot of money.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable problem.

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

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

Enjoy your work and work for whom you admire.

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

Read Ben Graham and Phil Fisher read annual reports, but don't do equations with Greek letters in them.

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.

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

Valuing a business is part art and part science.

Growth and value investing are joined at the hip.

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

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

You know ... you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.

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