Warren Buffet has gained a mass of wealth being an incredible investor since 1951, and still going strong in 2020. He’s generated about 20% annualized returns for his shareholders, typically more than double the rate of the S&P 500.
If you ever wanted to be a successful investor, take some notes on some of his famous and most memorable quotes that we think can help you on your path towards success on personal finance, investing, and life in general.
106 Best Warren Buffet Quoest about Investing, Success, and Money
1. “It is a terrible mistake for investors with long-term horizons — among them pension funds, college endowments, and savings-minded individuals — to measure their investment ‘risk’ by their portfolio’s ratio of bonds to stocks.” – Warren Buffet
2. “Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick, no.” – Warren Buffet
3. “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.” – Warren Buffet
4. “The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.” – Warren Buffet
5. “One can best prepare themselves for the economic future by investing in your own education. If you study hard and learn at a young age, you will be in the best circumstances to secure your future.” – Warren Buffet
6. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffet
7. “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” – Warren Buffet
8. “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.” – Warren Buffet
9. “Rule No. 1 is never lose money. Rule No. 2 is never forget Rule No. 1.” – Warren Buffet
10. “Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.” – Warren Buffet
11. “All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies.” – Warren Buffet
12. “Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.” – Warren Buffet
13. “If you like spending six to eight hours per week working on investments, do it. If you don’t, then dollar-cost average into index funds.” – Warren Buffet
14. “Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you’d be content to own it in the absence of any market.” – Warren Buffet
15. “Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.” – Warren Buffet
16. “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.” – Warren Buffet
17. “Since I know of no way to reliably predict market movements, I recommend that you purchase Berkshire shares only if you expect to hold them for at least five years. Those who seek short-term profits should look elsewhere.” – Warren Buffet
18. “You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” – Warren Buffet
19. “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be a more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” – Warren Buffet
20. “For the investor, a too-high purchase price for the stock of an excellent company can undo the effects of a subsequent decade of favorable business developments.” – Warren Buffet
21. “Widespread fear is your friend as an investor because it serves up bargain purchases.” – Warren Buffet
22. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” – Warren Buffet
23. “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.” – Warren Buffet
24. “The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.” – Warren Buffet
25. “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.” – Warren Buffet
26. “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffet
27. “The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” – Warren Buffet
28. “If returns are going to be 7 or 8 percent and you’re paying 1 percent for fees, that makes an enormous difference in how much money you’re going to have in retirement.” – Warren Buffet
29. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet
30. “On the margin of safety, which means, don’t try and drive a 9,800-pound truck over a bridge that says it’s, you know, capacity: 10,000 pounds. But go down the road a little bit and find one that says, capacity: 15,000 pounds.” – Warren Buffet
31. “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.” – Warren Buffet
32. “Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.” – Warren Buffet
33. “The years ahead will occasionally deliver major market declines — even panics — that will affect virtually all stocks. No one can tell you when these traumas will occur.” – Warren Buffet
34. “When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.” – Warren Buffet
35. “An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.” – Warren Buffet
36. “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes.” – Warren Buffet
37. “The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything — you can wait for your pitch.” – Warren Buffet
38. “If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.” – Warren Buffet
39. “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.” – Warren Buffet
40. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffet
41. “Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.” – Warren Buffet
42. “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” – Warren Buffet
43. “This does not bother Charlie [Munger] and me. Indeed, we enjoy such price declines if we have funds available to increase our positions.” – Warren Buffet
44. “It’s been an ideal period for investors: A climate of fear is their best friend. Those who invest only when commentators are upbeat end up paying a heavy price for meaningless reassurance.” – Warren Buffet
45. “Predicting rain doesn’t count, building the ark does.” – Warren Buffet
46. “Success in investing doesn’t correlate with IQ … what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.” – Warren Buffet
47. “When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients.” – Warren Buffet
48. “We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow’s obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits.” – Warren Buffet
49. “The best chance to deploy capital is when things are going down.” – Warren Buffet
50. “If you don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future earnings, just forget it and move on.” – Warren Buffet
51. “Cash… is to a business as oxygen is to an individual: never thought about when it is present, the only thing in mind when it is absent.” – Warren Buffet
52. “Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up.” – Warren Buffet
53. “Charlie and I view the marketable common stocks that Berkshire owns as interests in businesses, not as ticker symbols to be bought or sold based on their “chart” patterns, the “target” prices of analysts, or the opinions of media pundits.” – Warren Buffet
54. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffet
55. “Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.” – Warren Buffet
56. “Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity.” – Warren Buffet
57. “We want products where people feel like kissing you instead of slapping you.” – Warren Buffet
58. “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” – Warren Buffet
59. “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffet
60. “The one thing I will tell you is the worst investment you can have is cash. Everybody is talking about cash being king and all that sort of thing. Cash is going to become worth less over time. But good businesses are going to become worth more over time.” – Warren Buffet
61. “One thing that could help would be to write down the reason you are buying a stock before your purchase. Write down “I am buying Microsoft at $300 billion because…” Force yourself to write this down. It clarifies your mind and discipline.” – Warren Buffet
62. “I just sit in my office and read all day.” – Warren Buffet
63. “The most important investment you can make is in yourself.” – Warren Buffet
64. “It’s better to have a partial interest in the Hope diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.” – Warren Buffet
65. “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.” – Warren Buffet
66. “Don’t get caught up with what other people are doing. Being a contrarian isn’t the key but being a crowd follower isn’t either. You need to detach yourself emotionally.” – Warren Buffet
67. “I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business.” – Warren Buffet
68. “You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.” – Warren Buffet
69. “For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.” – Warren Buffet
70. “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.” – Warren Buffet
71. “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.” – Warren Buffet
72. “In the 54 years (Charlie Munger and I) have worked together, we have never forgone an attractive purchase because of the macro or political environment, or the views of other people. In fact, these subjects never come up when we make decisions.” – Warren Buffet
73. “After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.” – Warren Buffet
74. “Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.” – Warren Buffet
75. “I won’t say if my candidate doesn’t win, and probably half the time they haven’t, I’m going to take my ball and go home.” – Warren Buffet
76. “What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.” – Warren Buffet
77. “American business — and consequently a basket of stocks — is virtually certain to be worth far more in the years ahead.” – Warren Buffet
78. “You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.” – Warren Buffet
79. “We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.” – Warren Buffet
80. “Half of all coin-flippers will win their first toss; none of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game.” – Warren Buffet
81. “It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” – Warren Buffet
82. “Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies.” – Warren Buffet
83. “Just pick a broad index like the S&P 500. Don’t put your money in all at once; do it over a period of time.” – Warren Buffet
84. “Among the various propositions offered to you, if you invested in a very low cost index fund — where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.” – Warren Buffet
85. “There is nothing wrong with a ‘know nothing’ investor who realizes it. The problem is when you are a ‘know nothing’ investor but you think you know something.” – Warren Buffet
89. “And so the important thing we do with managers, generally, is to find the .400 hitters and then not tell them how to swing.” – Warren Buffet
90. “I have no views as to where it (gold) will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won’t do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo will be making a lot of money, and there will be a lot — and it’s a lot — it’s a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that.” – Warren Buffet
91. “What is smart at one price is stupid at another.” – Warren Buffet
92. “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.” – Warren Buffet
93. “Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.” – Warren Buffet
94. “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” – Warren Buffet
95. “When stock can be bought below a business’s value it is probably the best use of cash.” – Warren Buffet
96. “You could take all the gold that’s ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what it’s worth at current gold prices, you could buy — not some — all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 ExxonMobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?” – Warren Buffet
97. “You’re just hoping the next guy pays more. And you only feel you’ll find the next guy to pay more if he thinks he’s going to find someone that’s going to pay more. You aren’t investing when you do that, you’re speculating.” – Warren Buffet
98. “When you have able managers of high character running businesses about which they are passionate, you can have a dozen or more reporting to you and still have time for an afternoon nap. Conversely, if you have even one person reporting to you who is deceitful, inept or uninterested, you will find yourself with more than you can handle.” – Warren Buffet
99. “Many management [teams] are just deciding they’re gonna buy X billions over X months. That’s no way to buy things. You buy when selling for less than they are worth… It’s not a complicated equation to figure out whether it is beneficial or not to repurchase shares.” – Warren Buffet
100. “We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven’t learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.” – Warren Buffet
101. “Because if you’re wrong and rates go to 2 percent, which I don’t think they will, you pay it off. It’s a one-way renegotiation. It is an incredibly attractive instrument for the homeowner and you’ve got a one-way bet.” – Warren Buffet
102. “Stay away from it. It’s a mirage, basically…The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is a joke in my view.” – Warren Buffet
103. “You can’t borrow money at 18 or 20 percent and come out ahead.” – Warren Buffet
104. “If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%.” – Warren Buffet
105. “I believe in giving my kids enough so they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.” – Warren Buffet
106. “If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.” – Warren Buffet
We hope that you find this large list of Warren Buffect collection of quotes about investing, success and life that will help guide you on your path towards your own goals.
