Warren Buffett Quotes on Investing, Business, Stocks, Risk, Debt

Warren Buffett shares his experiences and thoughts as an investor in his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders and often in his public appearances. His nuggets of elementary wisdom are indeed hard and fast rules to be adopted by any youngster aspiring to get rich over time. I regret for having not been able to come across the words of this legendary investor early in my life. Had I had heard Warren Buffett quotes earlier, I would have become much wealthier than I am now! There was no Internet in those days or access to any reading material about him at my place.

In this post, I have tried to compile a list of quotes that have inspired and influenced me a lot. I have tried to segregate it based on business, investment, stock market, risk, diversification, and further interesting topics. Wherever possible, I have linked to the source. If any of his quotes have inspired you that I have not included here, do leave it in the comments section below.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Investing

Rule No. 1: never lose money; rule No. 2: don’t forget rule No. 1
Investing is simple, but not easy.
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. (Source: 2004 letter)
Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
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.
Success in investing doesn’t correlate with IQ once you’re above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.
An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes. (Source: 1992 letter)
Growth and value investing are joined at the hip.
An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business. (Source: 1993 letter)
The ability to say “no” is a tremendous advantage for an investor.
Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Business

Never invest in a business you can’t understand.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. (Source: 1989 letter)
Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre. (Source: 1989 letter)
When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever. (Source: 1988 letter)
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
I am a better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman because I am an investor.
Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.
The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble. We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.
With few exceptions, when a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact. (Source: 1980 letter)

Warren Buffett Quotes on Stocks, Stock Market, and Derivatives

Visualize yourself as a part owner of a business that you expect to stay with indefinitely, much as you might if you owned a farm or apartment house in partnership with members of your family. (Source: Owner’s Manual)
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. (Source: 2008 letter)
Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.
Buy a business, don’t rent stocks.
If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. (Source: 1996 letter)
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything–you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you’re a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, ‘Swing, you bum!’
Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard. (Source: 2013 letter)
In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. (Source: 1987 letter)
The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.
Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.
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 ten years.
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal. (Source: 2002 letter)

Warren Buffett Quotes on Real Life Situations

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
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.
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
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. (Source: 1985 letter)
Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut. (Source: 1982 letter)
Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
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. (Source: 1985 letter)
After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out. (Source: 2001 letter)
I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars. I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

Warren Buffet Quotes on Leadership, Habits, and Personality Traits

The business schools reward complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
Chains of habits are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
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.
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.
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult. (Source: The Super Investors of Graham & Doddsville.)
Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without, you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
Honesty is a very expensive gift; don’t expect it from cheap people.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Risk and Portfolio Diversification

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.
Keep all your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket closely.
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. (Source: 1993 letter)
The advice ‘you never go broke taking a profit’ is foolish.
Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.
The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Debt

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.
I do not like debt and do not like to invest in companies that have too much debt, particularly long-term debt. With long-term debt, increases in interest rates can drastically affect company profits and make future cash flows less predictable.
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet. (Source: Owner’s Manual)

Warren Buffett Quotes on Opportunity

A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable, problem. (Source: 1989 letter)
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.
Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble. (Source: 2009 letter)
Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Money

Money to some extent sometimes let you be in more interesting environments. But it can’t change how many people love you or how healthy you are.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Airline Business/Stocks

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. The airline industry’s demand for capital ever since that first flight has been insatiable. Investors have poured money into a bottomless pit, attracted by growth when they should have been repelled by it. (Source: 2007 letter)
If a capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk back in the early 1900s, he should have shot Orville Wright. He would have saved his progeny money. But seriously, the airline business has been extraordinary. It has eaten up capital over the past century like almost no other business because people seem to keep coming back to it and putting fresh money in. You’ve got huge fixed costs, you’ve got strong labor unions and you’ve got commodity pricing. That is not a great recipe for success. I have an 800 (free call) number now that I call if I get the urge to buy an airline stock. I call at two in the morning and I say: ‘My name is Warren and I’m an aeroholic.’ And then they talk me down.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Success

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say “no” to almost everything.
It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.

Warren Buffett Quotes on Gold

Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.
When somebody buys gold, or a painting, they are betting on someone else finding it more attractive in the future. That is investing in the price of an asset versus investing in the productivity of the asset. I like watching the productivity of stuff. After all, what can you do with a giant cube of gold? You can stare at it, fondle it, may be sit on top of it. (Source: Times of India)