Best 813 quotes of Warren Buffett on MyQuotes

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

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.

Accounting is the language of business.

A CEO's behavior has a huge impact on managers down the line.

A Company should be viewed as an unfolding movie, not as a still photograph

A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling.

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.

A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere.

After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie [Munger] and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them. To the extent we have been successful, it is because we have concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers.

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

A home is one of the most important assets that most people will ever buy. Homes are also where memories are made and you want to work with someone you can trust.

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.

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.

All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.

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

A lot of people disagree with me on this, I believe in mark to market.

Although we deal with probabilities and expectations, the actual results can deviate substantially from such expectations, particularly on a short-term basis.

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you.

Always invest for the long term.

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.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.

An argument is made that there are just too many question marks about the near future; wouldn't it be better to wait until things clear up a bit? You know the prose: "Maintain buying reserves until current uncertainties are resolved," etc. Before reaching for that crutch, face up to two unpleasant facts: The future is never clear and you pay a very high price for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.

And people really behaved in a fraudulent way or something, we'll go back and find the culprits later on. But that really isn't the problem we have. I mean that's where it came from, though. We leveraged up and if you have a 20 percent fall in value of a $20 trillion asset, that's $4 trillion. And when $4 trillion lands - losses land in the wrong part of this economy, it can gum up the whole place.

A newspaper that reduces its coverage of the news important to its community is certain to reduce its readership as well

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Anyone who believes a growth rate in excess of 15% per annum over the long term is attainable should pursue a career in sales, but avoid one in mathematics.

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.

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.

A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth.

A pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street (a community in which quality control is not prized) will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.

A pin lies in wait for every bubble and when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons.

A prediction about the direction of the stock market tells you nothing about where stocks are headed, but a whole lot about the person doing the predicting.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

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

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return.

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

As of 1992, in fact-though the picture would have improved since then-the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.

As one of my older friends says, "Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be." Let's take a stab at it, anyway.

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

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.

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.

At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books ... If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer.

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.

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

Bad terminology is the enemy of good thinking.

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