Price-less Quotes by Warren Buffett

Please note that many quotes are contextually. Many of them are meant for and to America and Americans. Many are said in various interviews at different times. Warren Buffett has never written any books.

• “When a manager with a reputation for excellence tackles a business with their reputation for poor economics, it is the reputation of business that remains intact.”
• A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought. 
• Beware of geeks bearing formulas. 
• Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. 
• Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction. 
• Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation. 
• I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute. 
  I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me. 
  I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over. 
• I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it. 
• I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years. 
• I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of - of American capitalism. 
• 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. 
• If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. 
• In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497. 
• In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield. 
• It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. 
• If a business does well, the stock eventually follows. 
• It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction. 
• It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. 
• It's never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride. 
• Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote. 
• Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it. 
• 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. 
• Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years. 
• Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. 
• Our favorite holding period is forever. 
• Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. 
• Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. 
• Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations. 
• Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1. 
• 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. 
• Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. 
• The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective. 
  
• The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth. 
• The only time to buy these is on a day with no "y" in it. 
• The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on. 
• There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. 
• Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre. 
• Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn't. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. 
• Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway. 
• We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time. 
• 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.' 
• We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds. 
• We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful. 
• We're still in a recession. We're not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out. 
• We've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It's more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II. 
• 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. 
• When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results. 
• Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful". 
• Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing. 
• 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. 
• You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in - in 2007, we just didn't know it was uncertain. It was - uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn't know it. 
• You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong. 
  Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.
• I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death – abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term ‘thinking outside the box!!
• 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.
• Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.
• We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.
• We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.

• There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don’t understand, but that doesn’t cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that’s what the individual investor should do.
• 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. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.
• You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Never invest in a business you cannot understand.
• Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.
• (When speaking of managers and executive compensation) The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner.
• The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.
• Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.
• Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.
• 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.
• Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.
• It is optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.
• As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it.
• The ability to say "no" is a tremendous advantage for an investor.
• Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.
• Lethargy, bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style.
• An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.
• 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.
• As a group, lemmings have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.
• "Turn-arounds" seldom turn.
• Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.
• Focus on return on equity, not earnings per share.
• Calculate "owner earnings" to get a true reflection of value.
• Growth and value investing are joined at the hip.
• The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.
• It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
• Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive.