Warren Buffett Quotes

Should you protect profits? Yes. But run for the hills? No.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

The future is never clear; you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

All market response results from a reduction of uncertainty.

In markets, there are times when you are looking for what makes sense. At other times, you are looking for what you can do that is sensible versus constraints and uncertainties.

Just because a stock is down doesn't mean it's a great buy.

We necessarily operate in an environment in which there's a great deal of uncertainty. In such an environment, it makes sense to use a risk-management approach to identify and avoid the big mistakes. That's one reason I favor a cautious approach.

Dealing with uncertainty is always a key challenge for investors. But dealing with uncertainty doesn't mean avoiding it - on the contrary, it is often fuzziness about a company's future that creates the type of opportunity bargain-hunting investors cherish.

Just because a company's future is highly uncertain doesn't mean an investment in it is risky. In fact, some of the best potential investments are highly uncertain but have little risk of permanent capital loss.

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.

After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!

We don't want to make a mistake. Would you rather make the mistake and err on the side of caution or wait until something happens and then answer to the American people, why you didn't vet these people properly?

Over many decades, our usual practice is that if something we like goes down, we buy more and more. Sometimes something happens, you realize you’re wrong, and you get out. But if you develop correct confidence in your judgment, buy more and take advantage of stock prices.

Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long term values.

I would rather sustain the penalties resulting from over-conservatism than face the consequences of error, perhaps with permanent capital loss, resulting from the adoption of "New Era" philosophy where trees really do grow to the sky.

What you really want to do in investments is figure out what's important and knowable. If it's unimportant or unknowable you forget about it.

Take the probability of loss times the amount of possible loss from the probability of gain times the amount of possible gain. That is what we're trying to do. It's imperfect, but that's what it's all about.

Investment decisions and personal decisions don't wait for the picture to be clarified.

This company looks cheap, that company looks cheap, but the overall economy could completely screw it up. The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal.