50 Quotes from Warren Buffett

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,"

2. "Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble."

3. "Widespread fear is your friend as an investor because it serves up bargain purchases."

4. "Rule No. 1 is never lose money. Rule No. 2 is never forget Rule No. 1."

5. "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

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

7. "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."

8. "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

9. "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."

10. "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."

11. "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."

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

13. "The most important investment you can make is in yourself."

14. "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."

15. "This does not bother Charlie [Munger] and me. Indeed, we enjoy such price declines if we have funds available to increase our positions."

16. "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."

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

18. "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."

19. "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."

20. "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."

21. "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"

22. "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."

23. "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."

24. "Never invest in a business you cannot understand."

25. "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."

26. "Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies."

27. "Keep things simple and don't swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick "no."

28. "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."

29. "Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest."

30. "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."

31. "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."

32. "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.

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

34. "I believe in giving my kids enough so they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing."

35. "If you're smart, you're going to make a lot of money without borrowing."

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

37. "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago"

38. "If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes."

39. "When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever."

40. "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."

41. "If you don't feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset's future earnings, just forget it and move on."

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

43. "You can't borrow money at 18 or 20 percent and come out ahead."

44. "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."

45. "If you're in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%."

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

47. "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."

48. "We want products where people feel like kissing you instead of slapping you."

49. "It's better to have a partial interest in the Hope diamond than to own all of a rhinestone."

50. "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."