Warren Buffett Quotes

Investing is the greatest business in the world because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate; the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then, when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.

Investment philosophy is the clear understanding that by owning shares of stocks he owns businesses, not pieces of paper.

Shares are not mere pieces of paper. They represent part ownership of a business. So, when contemplating an investment, think like a prospective owner.

I think there's something to be said for developing the disposition to own stocks without fretting.

If stocks are attractive and you don't buy, you don't just look like an idiot, you are an idiot.

But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.

Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket... it's part-ownership of a business.

If you go back to 2001, the market had two violent short covering rallies then, although I know the market didn't officially get going until March 2003.

When the man who ought to want a stock doesn't want it, why should I want it?

The person who I admire most in business is Warren Buffett. He is a long-term investor and has brilliant ideas, and he sticks to them.

I have mutual funds. I have a lot of individual stocks. I'm across the board, really well diversified.

I love the Knicks and Rangers, right, but you still have a responsibility to your shareholders. They're not there because they're fans. You don't invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a stock because you're a fan. You do it because you think that the business is going to increase in value, that the stock price is going to go up.

Ignore the stock market, ignore the economy, and buy a business you understand.

Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.

[In picking stocks] You really have to know a lot about business. You have to know a lot about competitive advantage. You have to know a lot about the maintainability of competitive advantage. You have to have a mind that quantifies things in terms of value. And you have to be able to compare those values with other values available in the stock market.

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.

I presumably lost $150,000 in the depression of 1937—on my one stock investment—because I did everything Lehman Brothers told me. I said, well, this is a fool’s procedure . . . buying stock in other people’s businesses.

Well if you've got information about a company, or you believe that a company is undervalued, you can go out and buy their stock and you can make some profit on it.

The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern.

Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that "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.

Who would think of buying or selling a private business because of someone's guess on the stock market? The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it. Its availability should never be turned into a livability whereby its periodic aberrations in turn formulate your judgements.

I'm always fully invested. It's a great feeling to be caught with your pants up.

When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: 'we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.

Successful investing is about owning businesses and reaping the huge rewards provided by the dividends and earnings growth of our nation's - and, for that matter, the world's - corporations.

Growth and value investing are joined at the hip.