Warren Buffett Quotes

We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.

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

The key is having more information than the other guy – then analysing it right and using it rationally.

Of course, a business with terrific economics can be a bad investment if the purchase price is excessive.

I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.

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.

It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

It’s easy to overlook what I consider to be the critical lesson of the Mrs. B saga: at 93, Omaha based Board Chairmen have yet to reach their peak. Please file this fact away to consult before you mark your ballot at the 2024 annual meeting of Berkshire.

I just read and read and read. ... I have always enjoyed reading.

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...

Because we are the largest lender in the manufactured homes sector and are also normally lending to lower-and-middle-income families, you might expect us to suffer heavy losses during a housing meltdown. But by sticking to old-fashioned loan policies — meaningful down payments and monthly payments with a sensible relationship to regular income — Clayton has kept losses to acceptable levels. It has done so even though many of our borrowers have had negative equity for some time.

In addition to being independent, directors should have business savvy, a shareholder orientation and a genuine interest in the company. The rarest of these qualities is business savvy — and if it is lacking, the other two are of little help. Many people who are smart, articulate and admired have no real understanding of business. That’s no sin; they may shine elsewhere. But they don’t belong on corporate boards.

wishing makes dreams come true only in Disney movies; it’s poison in business.

[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.

The requisites for board membership should be business savvy, interest in the job, and owner-orientation.