Warren Buffett Quotes

1. "Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1."

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

3. "It’s class warfare; my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be."

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

5. "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently."

6. "Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars."

7. "The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective."

8. "You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing."

9. "Can you really explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value."

10. "You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong."

11. "It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

12. "Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years."

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

14. "Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations."

15. "Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks."

16. "We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a 'romantic.'"

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

18. "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."

19. "Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote."

20. "Our favorite holding period is forever."

21. "I don't look to jump over seven-foot bars; I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over."

22. "If a business does well, the stock eventually follows."

23. "Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, 'Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.'"

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

25. "Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing."

26. "Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre."

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

28. "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield."

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

30. "Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it."

31. "There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."

32. "If you are in a poker game and after 20 minutes you don't know who the patsy is, then you’re the patsy."

“The truth is, everything that has happened in my life… that I thought was a crushing event at the time, has turned out for the better.” Warren Buffett (1930- )