Inspirational Quotes by Warren Buffett (Page 2 of 3)

Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.

I measure success by how many people love me. And the best way to be loved is to be lo veable.

I may have more money than you, but money doesn't make the difference. If
there is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you learn anything from me, this is the best advice I can give you.

I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand.

If you don't feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset's future earnings, just forget it and move on. No one has the ability to evaluate every investment possibility. But omniscience isn't necessary; you only need to understand the actions you undertake.

The plan itself is opportunism. There is no plan before that.

He must never forget Charlie's plea: Tell me where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.

When people tell me they've learned from experience, I tell them the trick is to learn from other people's experience.

House prices just soared beyond -- beyond reason in many places and they got financed in silly ways, and people lied about loans, all kinds of accesses entered into it. But that is what -- that is the single biggest cause of why we're here.

The great personal fortunes in the country weren't built on a portfolio of fifty companies. They were built by someone who identified one wonderful business. With each investment you make, you should have the courage and the conviction to place at least 10% of your net worth in that stock.

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.

If we have a strength, it is in recognizing when we are operating well within our circle of competence and when we are approaching the perimeter.

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.

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

What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow ... As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth -- for a while.

I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.

We've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion -- 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes.

I think it will get moving faster. I mean once you get it off the -- once credit flows -- now the recession is going to get worse.

I am not worried about the country. I'm just worried about anything that gums up the potential of the country. And right now, it's pretty gummed up.

It's the deleveraging that's going on right now that has caused the credit crisis.

It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.

If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.

I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn't that a little like saving up sex for your old age?

Time is your friend, impulse is your enemy. Take advantage of compound interest and don't be captivated by the siren song of the market.

I checked the actuarial tables, and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds. So I decided to eat like a six-year-old.

An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.

You should look at stocks as small pieces of business.

In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.

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

People will always try to stop you from doing the right thing if it is unconventional.

An investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace.

I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions.

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

When 40 billion of treasury bills are sold like, seven day treasury bills, at a yield of 1 20th of one percent, that means the whole country is basically at the point virtually, or a lot of the country is at the point of putting the money under the mattress.

At this point, when treasury bills, seven day treasury bills at 1 20th of one percent, it's not because people want to earn 1 20th of one percent, it's because they trust the fact the treasury will give it back to them next week.

In an inflationary world, a toll bridge (like company) would be a great thing to own because you've laid out the capital costs. You built it in old dollars and you don't have to keep replacing it.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper-middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

Asset values and earning power are the dominant factors affecting the valuation of a controlling interest in a business. Market price, which governs valuation of minority interest positions, is of little or no importance in valuing a controlling interest.

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

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

In our view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction carrying dangers that, while latent, are potentially lethal.

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.

I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire's tax rate. For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit.

There's no use running if you're on the wrong road.

Knowing the edge of your competency is important. If you think you know more than you do, you will get in trouble.

I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.

You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.

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.

If you have a harem of 40 women, you never get to know any of them very well.

Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume.

Having first rate people on the team is more important than designing hierarchies and clarifying who reports to whom.

I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter.

We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future.

The secret to happiness is having low expectations.

All but a few of the organizations do not specifically promise to deliver superior investment performance although it is perhaps not unreasonable for the public to draw such an inference from their advertised emphasis on professional management.

But 300 million Americans, their lending institutions, their government, their media, all believed that house prices were going to go up consistently. And that got billed into a $20 trillion residential home market. Lending was done based on it, and everybody did a lot of foolish things.

I mean, you may be very mad at some guy that walked away with a huge golden parachute, but that really isn't the important thing.

In my view, the trade deficit will create political turmoil at some point...Pretty soon, I think there will be a big adjustment.

In my opinion, the entire field of investment management, involving hundreds of billions of dollars, would be more satisfactorily conducted if everyone had a good yardstick for measurement of ability and sensibly applied it.

There are three kinds of people: 1. Innovators. 2. Imitators. 3. Idiots.

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.

I think I could make you fifty percent a year on one million dollars. No, I know I could. I guarantee that.

What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.

We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a 'romantic.'

An irresistable footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities -- at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.

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 OK.

It's a big mistake to try and mislead people. They will turn around.

When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits.

The capital gains tax is 15 percent now. So I sit there in my office and I make a lot of money by capital gains, and I pay 15 percent, and I pay no payroll tax on it.

We're paying maybe 25 percent of the income tax, but the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains. They don't take that from me on dividends.

Asset-heavy businesses generally earn low rates of return -- rates that often barely provide enough capital to fund the inflationary needs of the existing business, with nothing left over for real growth, for distribution to owners, or for acquisition of new businesses.

I have this complicated procedure I go through every morning, which is to look in the mirror and decide what I'm going to do. And I feel at that point, everybody's had their say.

The latter qualification brings to mind a fellow who applied for a job and stated he had twenty years of experience-which was corrected by a former employer to read one year's experience-twenty times.

Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.

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

The nature of democracy is such that when there's -- there'll be revulsion, obviously, towards -- that's never going to happen again.

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

In one way, I'm sympathetic to the institutional reluctance to face the music. I'd give a lot to mark my weight to 'model' rather than to 'market.'

The gross profits in many workouts appear quite small. It's a little like looking for parking meters with some time left on them. However, the predictability coupled with a short holding period produces quite decent average annual rates of return after allowance for the occasional substantial loss.

The Noah rule: Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does.

I am not in the business of predicting general stock market of business fluctuations. If you think I can do this, or think it is essential to an investment program, you should not be in the partnership.

I do not believe in inheriting your position in society based on which womb you come from... I think a rich person should leave his children enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.

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.

Asking for financial advice from a financial planner is like asking a barber if you need a hair cut.

On his Giving Pledge philanthropy: The way I got the message out was to get a copy of FORBES, look down that 400 list and start making phone calls! Bill and Melinda Gates did the same thing. So keep publishing
the list so I can milk it.

I think what people understand there probably -- well, they were hoping the private sector would do it rescuing AIG.

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

Investment ideas, like women are often more exciting than punctual.

I know that Congress will do the right thing.

You can't help some increase from this point. I don't want any viewer to go away think a magic wand exists in Congress. So they're going to see some more bad news. But if we do this, we're doing the right thing.

Most business mistakes are irreversible setbacks, but you get another chance. There are two things in life that you don't get another chance at -- marrying the wrong person and what you do with your children.

Games are won by players who focus on the playing field -- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.

Having a large amount of leverage is like driving a car with a dagger on the steering wheel pointed at your heart. If you do that, you will be a better driver. There will be fewer accidents but when they happen, they will be fatal.

We've got all the ingredients for a sensational future.

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

We need to throw the resources at this that are necessary. But like I say, we are not spending money. I mean, if we buy these assets intelligently, the United States Treasury will make money. I mean, it's borrowing money. It's just a few percent a year.

Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.

You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason.

An IPO is like a negotiated transaction -- the seller chooses when to come public -- and it's unlikely to be a time that's favourable to you.

Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking.

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.

We need a tax system that essentially takes very good care of the people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system but are nevertheless doing useful things in the society.

I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure understated.

Every day that goes by, I mean, if you don't react to Pearl Harbor for a week or two weeks or three weeks, you're behind in the war that you otherwise would have fought.

The happiest people do not necessarily have the best things.
They simply apreciate the things they have.

You should be unconcerned about short-term price action when you own the securities directly, just as you were unconcerned when you owned them indirectly through BPL. I think about them as businesses, not stocks, and if the business does all right over the long term, so will the stock.

People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started.

The true investor welcomes volatility ... a wildly fluctuating market means that irrationally low prices will periodically be attached to solid businesses.

If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

A market downturn, doesn't bother us. For us and our long term investors, it is an opportunity to increase our ownership of great companies with great management at good prices. Only for short term investors and market timers is a correction not an opportunity.

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.

During inflation, Goodwill is the gift that keeps on giving.

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you.

Failure comes from ego, greed, envy, fear, imitation. I have success not because I am smart, but because I am rational.

I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20.

Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.

If you've got a good enough business, if you have a monopoly newspaper, if you have a network television station -- I'm talking of the past -- you know, your idiot nephew could run it. And if you've got a really good business, it doesn't make any difference.

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

What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history.

Is management candid with the shareholders?

Problems in a company are like cockroaches in the kitchen. You will never find just one.

Gold has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative.

A diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor a person perfected without trials. Someone is enjoying shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.

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

One's objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out and get it over. Your problem won't improve with age.

I made my first investment at age eleven. I was wasting my life up until then.

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

Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that Price is what you pay; value is what you get. Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.

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

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

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

I don't have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don't have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.

The range of derivatives contracts is limited only by the imagination of man (or sometimes, so it seems, madmen). Say you want to write a contract speculating on the number of twins to be born in Nebraska in 2020. No problem-at a price, you will easily find an obliging counterparty.

The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.

I am not a businessman, I am an artist.

What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.

In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.

Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.

Keep all your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket closely.

Always invest for the long term.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

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

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

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

It's almost impossible to overpay the truly extraordinary CEO... but the species is rare.

If you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do.

If options aren't a form of compensation, what are they? If compensation isn't an expense, what is it? And, if expenses shouldn't go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?

To be successful, you should concentrate on the world of companies, not arcane accounting mathematics.

Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.

If you want to soar like an eagle in life, you can't be flocking with the turkeys.

Do not put all your eggs in one basket.

Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill.

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

Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party... the poor and middle class.

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without integrity, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

Focus alone is not enough; putting in the time to commit is also crucial to achieve success.

Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people.

Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.

In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

Investing is simple, but not easy.

I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It cost a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's a fantastic brand loyalty.

My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest.

In a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

If book knowledge made great investors, than the librarians would all be rich.

I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life too, I don't care what other rich people are doing. I don't want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

You've gotta keep control of your time, and you can't unless you say no. You can't let people set your agenda in life.

It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.

If you're in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.

I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.

In the business world, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business.

We don't do unnecessary things at Berkshire. And there are many things at big companies that are unnecessary.

I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire.

Surprise and delight your customers. There is nothing like that in business. If you delight your customers, you're a long way home.