Best 813 quotes of Warren Buffett on MyQuotes

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

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

Be fearful when there is greed and be greedy when there is fear.

Benign neglect, bordering on sloth, remains the hallmark of our investment process.

Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising 'Take two aspirins'?

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Beware [of] the investment activity that produces applause; the great moves are usually greeted by yawns.

Bull markets and Bear markets can obscure mathematical laws, they cannot repeal them.

Businesses always have opportunities to improve service, product lines, manufacturing techniques, and the like, and obviously these opportunities should be seized. But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error

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.

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.

... but the important thing is that when you do find one where you really do know what you are doing, you must buy in quantity.... Charlie and I have made a dozen or so very big decisions relative to net worth, although not as big as they should have been. And in each of those, we've known that we were almost certain to be right going in.

Buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn't work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn't going to work either.

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

Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up.

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

By periodically investing in an index fund, the know-nothing investors can actually outperform most investment professionals.

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

Can you know you can have institutions that put curbs on that in various ways, and actually what the banks, you know, they have various capital ratios and that sort of thing, but the banks got around them, I mean, they set up sieves and that sort of thing just to get more leverage. People love leverage when it's working. I mean, it's so easy to borrow money from a guy at X and put it out at X.

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

Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.

Cash, though, 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... When bills come due, only cash is legal tender. Don't leave home without it.

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

Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime, it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart and not too smart at that, only a very few times. Indeed, we now settle for one good idea a year.

Charlie and I have a number of filters that things have to get through before we'll think about them.

Charlie [Munger] and I are not big fans of resumes. Instead, we focus on brains, passion and integrity.

Confidence in markets and in institutions, it's a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don't even think about it. It's indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it's gone for five minutes, it's the only thing to think about.

Continually challenge and be willing to amend your best loved ideas.

Credit worthiness is like virginity, it can be preserved but not restored very easily, so it is crazy to play around with it.

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

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

Derivatives are like sex. It's not who we're sleeping with, it's who they're sleeping with that's the problem.

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

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

Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.

Does management resist the institutional imperative?

Does the business have a consistent operating history?

Does the business have favourable long term prospects?

Do not put all your eggs in one basket.

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

Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.

Don't invest in pieces of papers (stocks), invest in great businesses underlying them

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

Don't settle for anything other than your passion - if you're lucky enough to find it.

Do what you love and work for whom you admire the most, and you've given yourself the best chance in life you can.

Do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the most important thing.

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

Earnings can be pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them.

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.

[Economy] is flat on the floor, and the paramedics have arrived. And they shouldn't argue about whether they put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way or a quarter of an inch this way, or they shouldn't start criticizing the patient, because he didn't have a blood pressure test or something like that. They should do what's needed right now.