Warren Buffett

“People always ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most.”

“If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.”

“When I was sixteen, I had just two things on my mind - girls and cars. I wasn't very good with girls. So I thought about cars. I thought about girls, too, but I had more luck with cars. Let's say that when I turned sixteen, a genie had appeared to me. And that genie said, 'Warren, I'm going to give you the car of your choice. It'll be here tomorrow morning with a big bow tied on it. Brand-new. And it's all yours.'Having heard all the genie stories, I would say, 'What's the catch?' And the genie would answer, 'There's only one catch. This is the last car you're ever going to ge tin your life. So it's got to last a lifetime.'If that had happened, I would have picked out that car. But, can you imagine, knowing it had to last a lifetime, what I would do with it?I would read the manual about five times. I would always keep it garaged. If there was the least little dent or scratch, I'd have it fixed right away because I wouldn't want it rusting. I would baby that car, because it would have to last a lifetime.That's exactly the position you are in concerning your mind and body. You only get one mind and one body. And it's got to last a lifetime. Now, it's very easy to let them ride for many years. But if you don't take care of that mind and that body, they'll be a wreck forty years later, just life the car would be.It's what you do right now, today, that determines how your mind and body will operate ten, twenty, and thirty years from now.”

“I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”

“I am not a businessman, I am an artist”

“Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don't expect it from cheap people.”

“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

“Wall Street is the only place that people drive to in a Rolls Royce to take advice from people who ride the subway.”

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

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.”

“I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”

“[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

“Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.”

“You know ... you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.”

“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It's like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GDP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.”

“Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.”

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

“Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.”

“Rule No. 1 : Never lose money. Rule No. 2 : Never forget Rule No. 1.”

“Writing a check separates a commitment from a conversation.”

“There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don't like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn't that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

“In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't.”

“When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. ”

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute. ”

“Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press”

“Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.”

“I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.”

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

“If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

“The attitude of our managers vividly contrasts with that of the young man who married a tycoon's only child, a decidedly homely and dull lass. Relieved, the father called in his new son- in-law after the wedding and began to discuss the future: Son, you're the boy I always wanted and never had. Here's a stock certificate for 50% of the company. You're my equal partner from now on.' Thanks, dad.'Now, what would you like to run? How about sales?' I'm afraid I couldn't sell water to a man crawling in the Sahara.' Well then, how about heading human relations?' I really don't care for people.' No problem, we have lots of other spots in the business. What would you like to do?' Actually, nothing appeals to me. Why don't you just buy me out?”

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

“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.”

“Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas. ”

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing”

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minuted to ruin it. If you think about that you'll do things differently.”

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.”

“You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideals come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an ideal next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.”

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

“I won't close down a business of subnormal profitability merely to add a fraction of a point to our corporate returns. I also feel it inappropriate for even an exceptionally profitable company to fund an operation once it appears to have unending losses in prospect. Adam Smith would disagree with my first proposition and Karl Marx would disagree with my second; the middle ground is the only position that leaves me comfortable.”

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

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

“In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.”

“I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20.”

“Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill. ”

“It's nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don't want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it's a little like saving sex for your old age.”

“You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out.”

“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.”