Warren Buffett Quotes

The only thing that matters is here and the only thing that matters is now. And America's inability to delay gratification is because we do not have eternal thinking.

Humans have a tendency towards short-term thinking.

It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.

Money is very difficult to think about. So, we think about money as the opportunity cost of money. So, we at some point went to a Toyota dealership and we asked people, what will you not be able to do in the future if you bought this Toyota? Now, you would expect people to have an answer. But people were kind of shocked by the question. They never thought about it before. So, the most we got was people said, "Well, if I can't buy this Toyota, if I buy this Toyota, I can't buy a Honda." What is this thing? What is this value of price? Very hard to think about it.

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now

By definition, saving - for anything - requires us to not get things now so that we can get bigger ones later. That's hard. Our brains are hard wired to prefer the here and now.

We are creatures of the moment; we live from one little space to another, and only one interest at a time fills these.

The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.

I never think too far into the future. I'm too busy thinking about tomorrow's news.

There is only one conflict, and that’s between short-term and long-term thinking.

We don't plan to be good or bad. We just think, 'What do I want now? I want coffee now. I want the paper now.'

I ended up signing for IndyCar and it was a good decision. I should have waited another 10 days to actually talk to all of the teams, because I just went in, boom, I got the first offer and I said OK I'm racing. It's almost like it was the girlfriend just gives you a no and then you just get the next one that gives you a yes.

We make decisions based on what we feel in the moment.

Seek instant gratification - or the elusive promise of it - and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you.

I'm standing here saying that those who miss the boat now, will miss it forever. So if you want to be in Africa, think about investing.

You feel better in the short run when you have a tub of ice cream, but in the long run, you don't.

Discipline enables you to think first and act second.

When people think of the outcomes of their decisions, they think much more short term than that. They think in terms of gains and losses.

The main reason for people's lack of success is their willingness to give up what they want most of all, for what they want right now!

Waiting is a state of mind that says we want what we don't have. Therefore, with every kind of waiting we produce an inner conflict between now and the projected future. This greatly reduces the quality of our life. Are you a 'habitual waiter'?

Live only for today, and you ruin tomorrow.

Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.

The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking.

When we define our happiness by some point in the future, it will never arrive. We'll keep waiting until tomorrow. If we allow impatience to govern us, we will miss the gift of the moment. We'll arrive at that point in time we expected to provide fulfillment and find it lacking.

Eventually, it becomes a matter of scale. When the good outweighs the bad, you stay. When the bad is the only thing you notice anymore, you think about your future, or what's left of it, consider options.