Warren Buffett Quotes

the arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislature. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her saving in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation, or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leave her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 120 percent income tax, but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent.

It’s not that I want money. It’s the fun if making money and watching it grow.

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

It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.

For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.

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

From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required.

A good business is not always a good purchase - although it's a good place to look for one.

My favourite holding period is forever

Our goal is more modest: We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

A line from Bobby Bare’s country song explains what too often happens with acquisitions: “I’ve never gone to bed with an ugly woman, but I’ve sure woke up with a few.

You only have to do a few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

Read 500 pages like this every week. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest.

I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches — representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all.

Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you’d do so much better.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.