Warren Buffett Quotes

Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.

The most important thing in terms of your circle of competence is not how large the area of it is, but how well you've defined the perimeter.

Experts don't know exactly where the boundaries of their expertise are.

No psychologist should pretend to understand what he does not understand... Only fools and charlatans know everything and understand nothing.

The only way one should buy stocks is if you understand the underlying business. You stay within the circle of competence. You buy businesses you understand.

What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note that word “selected”: You don't have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.

In the great majority of cases we simply do not know enough about the industry or company to come to sensible judgments-in that situation we pass.

Definition: CONNOISSEUR, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else.

Your investor's edge is not something you get from Wall Street experts. It's something you already have. You can outperform the experts if you use your edge by investing in companies or industries you already understand.

Knowing the edge of your competency is important. If you think you know more than you do, you will get in trouble.

Never had any mathematical conversations with anybody, because there was nobody else in my field.

Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.

If you're a technology investor, and you decide that you're also going to be a healthcare investor or a green-tech investor, that doesn't usually work out that well. There are reasons why people make their careers studying these things and becoming experts.

It never occurred to any of us to consult in this emergency farmers, doctors, lawyers, shoemakers, or even statesmen. We could not escape the belief that the prospect of obtaining what we needed might be somewhat improved by making application to those whose business and surroundings qualified them to intelligently respond.

I've been very, very careful to tell people what I am qualified to talk about and what I'm not qualified to talk about.

'Camp' sort of means you don't know what you're doing, and we know what we're doing.

I'm a football manager, a football coach; I can't be expected to pontificate on everything.

I always worry that I'm a dilettante: I know something about lots of things but don't have exhaustive knowledge of much. Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority. I couldn't name more than a couple of good drum'n'bass acts, and I have no idea what's big in the dance world right now.

Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.

I think it's important for people like me to evaluate and reevaluate.

It's important to focus on what we do best and master one craft at a time.

Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it's doing.

You've got to choose your horse ahead of time. So, if you're interested in water technology, energy technology, you get to choose between the three or four companies that you have insight into. And you have to make a bet on them before they prove anything out.

I've never invested in any airline. I'm an airline manager. I don't invest in airlines. And I always said to the employees of American, 'This is not an appropriate investment. It's a great place to work and it's a great company that does important work. But airlines are not an investment.'

Understanding what you're OK with and what you're not OK with is so important to learn.