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Warren Buffett
113 quotes
“Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life. The calculation of intrinsic value, though, is not so simple. As our definition suggests, intrinsic value is an estimate rather than a precise figure, and it is additionally an estimate that must be changed if interest rates move or forecasts of future cash flows are revised.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: An Owner's Manual (1999)
“We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: An Owner's Manual (1999)
“Those who attended [the annual meeting] last year saw your Chairman pitch to Ernie Banks. This encounter proved to be the titanic duel that the sports world had long awaited. After the first few pitches — which were not my best, but when have I ever thrown my best? — I fired a brushback at Ernie just to let him know who was in command. Ernie charged the mound, and I charged the plate. But a clash was avoided because we became exhausted before reaching each other.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1999 Chairman's Letter
“Instead, we try to apply Aesop's 2,600-year-old equation to opportunities in which we have reasonable confidence as to how many birds are in the bush and when they will emerge (a formulation that my grandsons would probably update to "A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.").”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2000 Chairman's Letter
“But a pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street — a community in which quality control is not prized — will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2000 Chairman's Letter
“After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2001 Chairman's Letter
“Most companies are saddled with institutional constraints. A company's history, for example, may commit it to an industry that now offers limited opportunity. A more common problem is a shareholder constituency that pressures its manager to dance to Wall Street's tune. Many CEOs resist, but others give in and adopt operating and capital-allocation policies far different from those they would choose if left to themselves.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2003 Chairman's Letter
“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.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2004 Chairman's Letter
“Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, "I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men." If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2005 Chairman's Letter
“Size seems to make many organizations slow-thinking, resistant to change and smug.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2006 Chairman's Letter
“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.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2007 Chairman's Letter
“I've reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death — abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term "thinking outside the box.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2007 Chairman's Letter
“Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that “Price is what you pay; value is what you get.” Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2008 Chairman's Letter
“Putting people into homes, though a desirable goal, shouldn't be our country's primary objective. Keeping them in their homes should be the ambition.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2008 Chairman's Letter
“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.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2008 Chairman's Letter
“Upon leaving [the derivatives business], our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: "I liked you better before I got to know you so well.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2008 Chairman's Letter
“The common intellectual theme of the investors from Graham-Doddsville is this: they search for discrepencies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business in the market... through the medium of marketable stocks...”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our Graham & Dodd investors... do not discuss beta, the or in returns among securities. ...[M]ost of them would have difficulty defining these terms. The investors simply focus on two variables: price and value.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Walter never went to college, but took a course from Ben Graham at night at the . Walter left Graham-Newman [Partnership] in 1955... He knows how to identify securities that sell at considerably less than their value to a private owner. And that's all he does. ...He simply says, if a business is worth a dollar and I can buy it for 40 cents, something good may happen to me. And he does it over and over again.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tom [Knapp] was a chemistry major at Princeton before the war; when he came back... he was a beach bum. And then one day he read that Dave Dodd was giving a night course in investments at Columbia. Tom took it on a non-credit basis, and he got so interested... that he enrolled at Columbia Business School where he got the MBA... He took Dodd's course again, and took Ben Graham's course. ...35 years later ...I found him on the beach ...he owns the beach!”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he idea of buying dollar bills for 40 cents takes immediately with people or it doesn't take at all. It's like an inoculation. ...It doesn't seem to be a matter of I.Q. or academic training. It's instant recognition, or it's nothing.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stan [Perlmeter] was a liberal arts major... We happened to be in the same building... Again, it took five minutes for Stan to embrace the value approach.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Very, very few s are managed from a value standpoint.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's not like I am reciting... the names of a bunch of lottery winners. ...I knew what they had been taught and ...had some personal knowledge of their intellect, character and temperament. ...[T]his group has assumed far less risk than average; note their record in years when the general market is weak. While they differ greatly in style, these investors are, mentally, always buying the business, not buying the stock. ...[A]ll exploit the difference between the market price of a business and its intrinsic value.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm convinced that there is much inefficiency in the market.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the price of a stock can be influenced by a "herd" on Wall Street with prices set at the margin by the most emotional person, or the greediest person, or the most depressed person, it is hard to argue that the market always prices rationally. In fact, market prices are often nonsensical.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greater the potential for reward in the value portfolio, the less risk there is.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Washington Post Company in 1973 was selling for $80 million in the market. ...[Y]ou could have sold the assets ...for not less than $400 million ...Now, if the stock had declined even further... to $40 million... its beta would have been greater. ...This is truly Alice in Wonderland. I have never been able to figure out why it's riskier to buy $400 million worth of properties for $40 million than for $80 million.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You... have to have the knowledge to... make a very general estimate about the value of the underlying businesses. But you do not cut it close. That is what Ben Graham meant by having a margin of safety.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he secret has been out for 50 years, ever since Ben Graham and Dave Dodd wrote Security Analysis, yet I have seen no trend toward in... 35 years... There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace, and those who read their Graham and Dodd will continue to prosper.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. "The Three Essential Warren Buffett Quotes To Live By" forbes.com (20 April 2014)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We're going to move a lot of crude (oil) in this country, and we have to learn how to do it very safely. "Buffett: Moving Oil By Rail Safely Is A Major Industry Concern" Investing.com (24 April 2014)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't make a good deal with a bad person. "23 Quotes from Warren Buffett on Life and Generosity" forbes.com (02 December 2013)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble. "25 Best Warren Buffett Quotes" The Motley Fool (28 September 2014)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don't know. "The genius of Warren Buffett in 23 quotes" MarketWatch (19 August 2015)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. "10 Brilliant Quotes From Warren Buffett, America's Second-Richest Person " entrepreneur.com (13 November 2014)”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Take the job that you would take if you were independently wealthy.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Look for integrity, intelligence and energy.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's a whole bunch of things I don't know a thing about — I just stay away from those. So, I stay within what I call my circle of competence.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I just read and read and read. ... I have always enjoyed reading.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism is all about somebody coming and trying to take the castle. Now what you need is .... you need a castle that has some durable competitive advantage — some castle that has a moat around it.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like to study failure, actually. My partner says, "I want to know where I'll die so I'll never go there." We want to see what has caused businesses to go bad. The biggest thing that kills them is complacency. ... The danger would always be that you rest on your laurels.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Warren Buffett's Top 10 Rules for Success – YouTube, uploaded by Evan Carmichael, 2015”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I eat like a normal 6-year-old, but if you look at the mortality statistics, I mean, 6-year-olds don't die very often.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part 2 — Billionaire Warren Buffett says GOP health reform bills are relief for the rich" PBS Newshour (27 June 2017)
“Confidence comes back one at a time, but fear, is instantaneous.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come to a bad ending.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Warren Buffett Predicts ‘Bad Ending’ for Bitcoin — Is It a Doomed Investment? (2018)
“I would like to first introduce our directors. I'm Warren Buffett, and I was born and raised here in Omaha. We have Greg Abel — he was born and raised in Canada, and we have Ajit Jain who was born and raised in India. So we have a very diverse group.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 is 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 GNP 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.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Greatest Investor (1997) by Janet C. Lowe, pp. 165-166
“The free market's the best mechanism ever devised to put resources to their most efficient and productive use. ... The government isn't particularly good at that. But the market isn't so good at making sure that the wealth that's produced is being distributed fairly or wisely. Some of that wealth has to be plowed back into education, so that the next generation has a fair chance, and to maintain our infrastructure, and provide some sort of safety net for those who lose out in a market economy. And it just makes sense that those of us who've benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share. ... When you get rid of the estate tax, you're basically handing over command of the country's resources to people who didn't earn it. It's like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Barack Obama, as quoted in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), Ch. 5