Warren Buffett Quotes

You get in a lot of trouble when you start putting fictitious numbers.

We need a tax system that essentially takes very good care of the people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system but are nevertheless doing useful things in the society.

I have this complicated procedure I go through every morning, which is to look in the mirror and decide what I'm going to do. And I feel at that point, everybody's had their say.

Investing in a market where people believe in efficiency is like playing bridge with someone who has been told it doesn't do any good to look at the cards.

I have a wonderful family. I have a job that I love and wonderful people who help me with it. It can't get any better than that.

If we have a strength, it is in recognizing when we are operating well within our circle of competence and when we are approaching the perimeter.

Fund consultants like to require style boxes such as "long-short," "macro," "international equities." At Berkshire our only style box is "smart."

In the search [of a deal], we adopt the same attitude one might find appropriate in looking for a spouse: It pays to be active, interested, and open-minded, but it does not pay to be in a hurry.

In economics, you always want to ask 'And then what?'

Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.

You have no ability, if you're a financial institution and you're threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.

When you build a bridge, you insist that it can carry 30,000 pounds, but you only drive 10,000-pound trucks across it. And that same principle works in investing.

I'm putting all my money in the Chinese toy market.

If principles can become dated, they're not principles.

I've argued with the senators and congressmen I've talked to. You don't want to be too little too late. If you buy them at the right price, you may be buying two trillion of face value.

People do, as long as you have markets, you'll have excesses.

The stockmarket is a semi-psychotic creature given to extremes of elation and despair.

Does the business have a consistent operating history?

Personally, I really hope I can treat everyone equally. I think I have done a pretty good job so far but I know I can do it better.

The single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power.

In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.

I think once you start putting phony figures into financial statements, you get in a lot of trouble. And we've seen so much of that in the last 20 years.

Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money - probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.

It takes 150 years to build an investment bank and only five minutes to convince you to sell me preferred stock in it at a 10% interest rate.

A single year's performance is of minor importance and, good or bad, should never be taken seriously.

You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.

In an inflationary world, a toll bridge (like company) would be a great thing to own because you've laid out the capital costs. You built it in old dollars and you don't have to keep replacing it.

You could be somewhere where the mail was delayed three weeks and do just fine investing.

The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.

If at first you do succeed, quit trying on investing.

If I taught a class, on my final exam I would take an Internet company and ask, 'How much is this company worth?' Anyone who would answer, I would flunk.

The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.

I don't think it would be crazy to have a model or an entity model on the Reconstruction Finance Corp.

You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping.

You have hedge funds and people like that buying these assets to yield 15 or 20 percent, I mean, that's the buyer for these people that are trying to unload them.

I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out.

This economy doesn't work well without the lubrication of credit and trust.

When a management with reputation for brilliance gets hooked up with a business with a reputation for bad economics, it's the reputation of the business that remains intact.

People should always know better.

You can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is and he's doing these things and he's getting rich.

Confidence is key. You're not going to put your money - you're not going to leave your money with me unless you're confident I'm going to give it back to you.

People always should know better. People don't get - they don't get smarter about things that get as basic as greed.

I have an 800 freephone number now that I call if I get the urge to buy an airline stock. I call at two in the morning and I say: "My name is Warren and I'm an aeroholic." And then they talk me down.

The managers at fault periodically report on the lesson they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons.

Market price, while used exclusively to value our investments in minority positions, is not a relevant factor when applied to our controlling interests.

In one way, I'm sympathetic to the institutional reluctance to face the music. I'd give a lot to mark my weight to 'model' rather than to 'market.'

In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen.

Is management candid with the shareholders?

Does management resist the institutional imperative?

The market system rewards me outlandishly for what I do, but that doesn't mean I'm any more deserving of a good life than a teacher or a doctor or someone who fights in Afghanistan.