Warren Buffett quotes:

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

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.'

I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can't be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they're not getting some other matter.

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.

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

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

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

I am a huge bull on this country. We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn't. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.

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.

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We'll break out of it. It takes time.

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

Predicting rain doesn't count. Building arks does.

Basically, when you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves - and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

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

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

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

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.

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

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."

There are three kinds of people: 1. Innovators. 2. Imitators. 3. Idiots.

The fundamental basis of above-average performance in the long run is sustainable competitive advantage.

Accounting is the language of business.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

We only want to link up with people whom we like, admire, and trust. ... We do not wish to join with managers who lack admirable qualities, no matter how attractive the prospects of their business. We've never succeeded in making a good deal with a bad person.

The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.

Other guys read Playboy. I read annual reports.

When I take a look at a company's annual report, if I don't understand it, they don't want me to understand it.

I read annual reports of the company I'm looking at and I read the annual reports of the competitors - that is the main source of material.

When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: 'we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.

Read Ben Graham and Phil Fisher read annual reports, but don't do equations with Greek letters in them.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements.

What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow ... As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth - for a while.

What motivates most gold purchasers is their belief that the ranks of the fearful will grow. During the past decade that belief has proved correct. Beyond that, the rising price has on its own generated additional buying enthusiasm, attracting purchasers who see the rise as validating an investment thesis. As 'bandwagon' investors join any party, they create their own truth - for a while.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

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.

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

Do not put all your eggs in one basket.

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.

We don't get paid for being busy, we get paid for being right.

The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago.

The best education you can get is investing in yourself, and that doesn't mean college or university.

The best investment you can make, is an investment in yourself...The more you learn, the more you'll earn.

The best investment you can make is in yourself

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.

No formula in finance tells you that the moat is 28 feet wide and 16 feet deep. That's what drives the academics crazy. They can compute standard deviations and betas, but they can't understand moats.

I may have more money than you, but money doesn't make the difference. If there is any difference between you and me, it may simply be that I get up and have a chance to do what I love to do, every day. If you learn anything from me, this is the best advice I can give you.

... 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.

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.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.

Of our 49 billion, we haven't moved any to Bitcoin

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

I've seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage -- leverage being borrowed money. You really don't need leverage in this world much. If you're smart, you're going to make a lot of money without borrowing.

Investors, of course, can, by their own behavior make stock ownership highly risky. And many do. Active trading, attempts to "time" market movements, inadequate diversification, the payment of high and unnecessary fees to managers and advisors, and the use of borrowed money can destroy the decent returns that a life-long owner of equities would otherwise enjoy. Indeed, borrowed money has no place in the investor's tool kit.

I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. It cost a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's a fantastic brand loyalty.

I have no use whatsoever for projections or forecasts. They create an illusion of apparent precision. The more meticulous they are, the more concerned you should be. We never look at projections, but we care very much about, and look very deeply at, track records. If a company has a lousy track record, but a very bright future, we will miss the opportunity...

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

My rather puritanical view is that any investment manager, whether operating as broker, investment counselor of a trust department, investment company, etc., should be willing to state unequivocally what he is going to attempt to accomplish and how he proposes to measure the extent to which he gets the job done.

We've used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we're running a federal deficit that's 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It's more stimulative than any policy we've followed since World War II.

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

Optimism.. is the enemy of the rational buyer

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

We also believe candour benefits us as managers. The CEO who misleads often in public eventually misleads himself in private.

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

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

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

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it's the lack of change that appeals to me. I don't think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That's the kind of business I like.

I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they're going to look like in ten to fifteen years time. Take Wrigley's chewing gum. I don't think the internet is going to change how people chew gum.

The typical large company has a compensation committee, They don't look for Dobermans on that committee, they look for chihuahuas.

Having first rate people on the team is more important than designing hierarchies and clarifying who reports to whom.

If I eat 2,700 calories a day, a quarter of that is Coca-Cola,

Problems in a company are like cockroaches in the kitchen. You will never find just one

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.

My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest.

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.

Time is your friend, impulse is your enemy. Take advantage of compound interest and don't be captivated by the siren song of the market.

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return.

It is unquestionably true that the investment companies have their money more conventionally invested than we do. To many people conventionality is indistinguishable from conservatism. In my view, this represents erroneous thinking. Neither a conventional nor an unconventional approach, per se, is conservative.

The value of market esoterica to the consumer of investment advice is a different story. In my opinion, investment success will not be produced by arcane formulae, computer programs or signals flashed by the price behavior of stocks and markets. Rather an investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace.

An investor will succeed by coupling good business judgment with an ability to insulate his thoughts and behavior from the super-contagious emotions that swirl about the marketplace.

Energy deregulation will be the largest transfer of wealth in history.

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.

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

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

There is no question that an important service is provided to investors by investment companies, investment advisors, trust departments, etc. This service revolves around the attainment of adequate diversification, the preservation of a long-term outlook, the ease of handling investment decisions and mechanics, and most importantly, the avoidance of the patently inferior investment techniques which seem to entice some individuals.

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

When you're associating with the people that you love, doing what you love, it doesn't get any better than that.

If you buy the things you don't need, you will soon be selling the things that you need.

A market downturn, doesn't bother us. For us and our long term investors, it is an opportunity to increase our ownership of great companies with great management at good prices. Only for short term investors and market timers is a correction not an opportunity.

I bought a company in the mid-'90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I've made lots of dumb decisions. That's part of the game.

Outstanding long-term results are produced primarily by avoiding dumb decisions, rather than by making brilliant ones.

Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.

The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball.

I made my first investment at age eleven. I was wasting my life up until then.

Observing that the market was FREQUENTLY efficient, EMT Adherents went on to conclude incorrectly that it was ALWAYS efficient. The difference between these propositions is night and day.

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. The person sitting in the shade now should be grateful for the person who planted and tended that tree. That includes all those benefactors of humanity throughout history that created, invented, financed, produced, maintained and improved all that we enjoy today.

Enjoy your work and work for whom you admire.

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay.

It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.

Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style. The exception was Wells Fargo, a superbly-managed, high-return banking operation in which we increased our ownership to just under 10%, the most we can own without the approval of the Federal Reserve Board.

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

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.

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

In the financial markets I find it easy to predict what will happen and very difficult to predict when it will happen. I think that things were clear during the bubble as to what would happen eventually.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

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

...I will give you two pieces of advice. Invest as much in yourself as you can; you are your own best asset by far. Then follow your passion; you want to be really excited to get out of bed every morning.