Warren buffett quotes

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

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

Learning how to live is much more important than learning how to make a living.

Other guys read Playboy. I read annual reports.

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

Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.

It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

The most important investment you can make is in yourself... nobody can tax it or take it away from you.

Never be afraid to ask for too much when selling or offer too little when buying.

If you're extremely rich, and you have got children, my theory was, you give them enough so they can do anything, but not enough so they can do nothing.

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

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you.

Don't risk what is important to you, to get what is not important to you.

Basically, the single-most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power.

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.

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

If you buy the things you don't need, you will soon be selling the things that you need.

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

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.

Calculate "owner earnings" to get a true reflection of value.

The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.

The truth is, everything that has happened in my life... that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better.

There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.

The value of a business is the cash it's going to produce in the future.

The ability to say no is a tremendous advantage for an investor.

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

The secret to happiness is having low expectations.

Well, I think the biggest mistake is not learning the habits of saving properly early. Because saving is a habit. And then, trying to get rich quick. It's pretty easy to get well-to-do slowly. But it's not easy to get rich quick.

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

The key to success is emotional stability.

In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.

The only question is whether you’re going to do it today or tomorrow. If you keep saying you’re going to do it tomorrow, you’ll never do it. You have to get on it today.

A bull market is like sex. It feels best just before it ends.

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

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

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

It's much easier to stay out of trouble now than to get out of trouble later.

it's a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones.

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

The fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage.

If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.

If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.

Money will not change how healthy you are or how many people love you.

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

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

Our goal is to find an outstanding business at a sensible price, not a mediocre business at a bargain price.

It is better to point out your own mistakes than have somebody else do it.

Cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.

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

You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies. You have to find the companies that are off the map - way off the map.

Whatever you like to do, make it a hobby and whatever the world likes to do, make it a business.

Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.

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.

When somebody makes it very easy for you to do it by saying you don't really have to put up my money, you can lie about your income a little, or we'll give you 100 percent mortgage, you're going to do it, because everybody that's done it has been proven right. You have social tools, and you're going to feel like an idiot if you didn't do it, because the house cost more.

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

Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.

The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money.

All I have to do is think and not be influenced by others.

The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself... The more you learn, the more you'll earn.

You can't make a good deal with a bad person.

If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don't own it for 10 minutes.

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

If the reason for doing something is that everyone else is doing it, it's not a good enough reason.

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

Traditional wisdom is long on tradition and short on wisdom.

Intensity is the price of excellence.

Be fearful when the markets get greedy, be greedy when the markets get fearful.

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

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

I make plenty of mistakes and I'll make plenty more mistakes, too. That's part of the game. You've just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.

Stocks are the only thing that people are happy to buy when the price goes up.

Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.

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

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.

The greatest investment a young person can make is in their own education, in their own mind. Because money comes and goes. Relationships come and go. But what you learn once stays with you forever.

The Happiest people DO NOT necessarily have the BEST THINGS. They simply APPRECIATE the things they have.

When it's raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.

But, surprise - none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham's investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.

As an investor with small capital, one should prefer businesses that have high returns on capital and that require little incremental investment to grow.

Don't pass up something that's attractive today because you think you will find something way more attractive tomorrow.

What you really want to do in investments is figure out what's important and knowable. If it's unimportant or unknowable you forget about it.

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

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

Never do anything in life if you would be ashamed of seeing it printed on the front page of your hometown newspaper for your friends and family to see.

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

I don't want to be on the other side of the table from the customer. I was never selling anything that I didn't believe in myself or use myself.

Trust is like the air we breathe--when it's present, nobody really notices; when it's absent, everybody notices.

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.

None of this means, however, that a business or stock is an intelligent purchase simply because it is unpopular; a contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: "Most men would rather die than think. Many do."

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

Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner.

Investing is simple, but not easy.

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.

Never test the depth of river with both the feet.

Money is not everything. Make sure you earn a lot before speaking such nonsense.

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

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Look for 3 things in a person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If they don't have the last one, don't even bother with the first two.

The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient.

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

Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

Growth and value investing are joined at the hip.

Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source.

We don't get paid for being busy, we get paid for being right.

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

I bought my first stock in 1942, in the summer of '42. I was 11 years old. And so 75 years have gone by. And I have never known what the market's going to do the next day. And that's not my game. My game is to decide whether I'm in the right economy, which America's definitely been ever since that time. The Dow has gone from 100 to 21,000 during that time. And no matter what the headlines say, or terrible things are happening - we were losing the war in the Pacific when I first bought stocks.

The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.

You can be sure that over the next 10 years, you'll see something that you did not think was possible.

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

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

Money to some extent sometimes let you be in more interesting environments. But it can't change how many people love you or how healthy you are.

You don't need to have extraordinary effort to achieve extraordinary results. You just need to do the ordinary, everyday things exceptionally well.

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

The smartest side to take in a bidding war is the losing side.

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.

The one piece of advice I can give you is, do what turns you on. Do something that if you had all the money in the world, you’d still be doing it. You’ve got to have a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.

At age 19, I read a book [The Intelligent Investor] and what I'm doing today, at age 76, is running things through the same thought process I learned from the book I read at 19.

Be brave when others are afraid, and afraid when others are brave.

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.

The best asset is your own self. You can become to an enormous degree the person you want to be