Famous for investing and amassing billions of dollars in wealth, Warren Buffett has been at the forefront of investors for decades. As Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway he’s had many opportunities to share his wealth of knowledge and in the process has been quoted over and over. Learn from the best right? We decided to compile a list of our favorite Warren Buffet Quotes in many different aspects of life we deal with.
Warren Buffett Quotes About Life
1 “Imagine that you had a car and that was the only car you’d have for your entire lifetime. Of course, you’d care for it well, changing the oil more frequently than necessary, driving carefully, etc. Now, consider that you only have one mind and one body. Prepare them for life, care for them. You can enhance your mind over time. A person’s main asset is themselves, so preserve and enhance yourself.” – Warren Buffett
2 “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.” – Warren Buffett
3 “Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill. ” – Warren Buffett
4 “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.” – Warren Buffett
5 “You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.” – Warren Buffett
6 “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.” – Warren Buffett
7 “I had a great teacher in life in my father. But I had another great teacher in terms of profession in terms of Ben Graham. I was lucky enough to get the right foundation very early on. And then basically I didn’t listen to anybody else. I just look in the mirror every morning and the mirror always agrees with me. And I go out and do what I believe I should be doing. And I’m not influenced by what other people think.” – Warren Buffett
8 “…not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.” – Warren Buffett
9 “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.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett quotes about investing
10 “Investing is an activity in which consumption today is foregone in an attempt to allow greater consumption at a later date.” – Warren Buffett
11 “What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don’t know.” – Warren Buffett
12 “I call investing the greatest business in the world … because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! and nobody calls a strike on you. There’s no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.” – Warren Buffett
13 “Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.” – Warren Buffett
14 “There is nothing wrong with a ‘know nothing’ investor who realizes it. The problem is when you are a ‘know nothing’ investor but you think you know something.” – Warren Buffett
15 “Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. 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 fly epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.” – Warren Buffett
16 “There’s been far, far, far more money made through salesmanship abilities than through investment abilities. And the people you pay to help identify (future outperformers) don’t know how to identify them. They do know how to sell you.” – Warren Buffett
17 “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.” – Warren Buffett
18 “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes” – Warren Buffett
19 “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.” – Warren Buffett
20 “By the age of 10, I’d read every book in the Omaha public library about investing, some twice. You need to fill your mind with various competing thoughts and decide which make sense. Then you have to jump in the water – take a small amount of money and do it yourself. Investing on paper is like reading a romance novel vs. doing something else. You’ll soon find out whether you like it. The earlier you start, the better.” – Warren Buffett
21 “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” – Warren Buffett
22 “An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.” – Warren Buffett
23 “Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you’d be content to own it in the absence of any market.” – Warren Buffett
24 “When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.” – Warren Buffett
25 “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” – Warren Buffett
26 “You need to divorce your mind from the crowd. The herd mentality causes all these IQ’s to become paralyzed. I don’t think investors are now acting more intelligently, despite the intelligence. Smart doesn’t always equal rational. To be a successful investor you must divorce yourself from the fears and greed of the people around you, although it is almost impossible.” – Warren Buffett
27 “Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” – Warren Buffett
28 “Charlie and I would follow a buy-and-hold policy even if we ran a tax-exempt institution.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett quotes about money
29 “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No.1” – Warren Buffett
30 “The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” – Warren Buffett
31 “Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money.” – Warren Buffett
32 “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.” – Warren Buffett
33 “If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.” – Warren Buffett
34 “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.” – Warren Buffett
35 “If your employees, including your CEO, wish to give to their alma maters or other institutions to which they feel a personal attachment, we believe they should use their own money, not yours.” – Warren Buffett
36 “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.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett leadership quotes
37 “Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops” – Warren Buffett
38 “The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” – Warren Buffett
39 “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing” – Warren Buffett
40 “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minuted to ruin it. If you think about that you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett business quotes
41 “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffett
42 “In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.” – Warren Buffett
43 “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” – Warren Buffett
44 “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.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett financial quotes
45 “Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.” – Warren Buffett
46 “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.” – Warren Buffett
Waffen Buffet quotes about success
47 “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” – Warren Buffett
48 “Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by home many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.” – Warren Buffett
49 “I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett quotes on saving
50 “The biggest mistake is not learning the habit of saving properly.” – Warren Buffett
51 “Do not save what is left after spending; instead, spend what is left after saving.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffet motivational quotes
52 “It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” – Warren Buffett
53 “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.” – Warren Buffett
More Warren Buffett quotes
54 “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett
55 “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.” – Warren Buffett
56 “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
57 “Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble” – Warren Buffett
We talk a lot about credit, finance, money, paying off debt and becoming financially independent here on YMIDoingThis always looking to learn from other’s success as we create our own. Warren Buffett’s quotes give a lot of sound advice on how we can better our lives, simplify our finances and reach our financial independence goals. What’s your favorite quote by Warren Buffett?