The best quotes from Warren

If there is any investor who you could look up to and use as a “role model,” Warren Buffett would be your man. He takes a simplified and long-term approach to investing; and he puts all of the Wall St. day-traders to shame. He is without a doubt one of the greatest investors of all time, and has been in the top 5 richest people for decades. When you hear him speak, he is likely to resemble your grandfather with his sincerity, down-to-earth nature, and wisdom from years of living. If you cannot tell, I am a FAN of Warren.

I gathered a list of quotes from Warren Buffett over the years about life, money, investing, and anything else. If I have any of your own favorite Warren Buffet quotes that I may have missed, please add them to the comments.

Also check out these 9 tips from Warren and these Warren Buffett videos

• A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
• If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
• Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
• Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
• Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from the folly rather than participate in it.
• Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
• I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
• 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.
• If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
• In the business world, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
• It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
• 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.
• It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
• Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
• 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.
• Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
• Our favorite holding period is forever.
• Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
• Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
• 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.
• The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
• The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
• The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
• The only time to buy these is on a day with no “y” in it.
• 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.
• There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
• Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
• 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.’
• We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
• We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
• When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
• Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
• 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 quotes added 05/07/08…)

• It’s better to have a part interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.
• I should emphasize that we do not measure the progress of our investments by what their market prices do during any given year. Rather, we evaluate their performance by the two methods we apply to the businesses we own. The first test is improvement in earnings, with our making due allowance for industry conditions. The second test, more subjective, is whether their “moats” – a metaphor for the superiorities they possess that make life difficult for their competitors – have widened during the year.
• She’s smart, she loves the business, and she loves her associates. That beats having an MBA degree any time.

What are your favorite Warren Buffett quotes?

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