109 Incredible Warren Buffett Quotes

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Warren Buffett is arguably the greatest investor of our time.

His net worth is estimated to be around $100 billion dollars and he preaches common sense when it comes to investing your money.

His annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway investors has become a must read to all investors, not just those who invest in his company.

Because of his insights on investing, I created this post of 109 Warren Buffett quotes.

Not only will you find great investing quotes, but also timeless quotes on money and on life.

I am certain you will find a few quotes that will inspire you to improve your finances.

109 Warren Buffett Quotes

Warren Buffett On Investing

warren buffett quotes

#1. “All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies.” – Warren Buffett

#2. “For the investor, a too-high purchase price for the stock of an excellent company can undo the effects of a subsequent decade of favorable business developments.” – Warren Buffett

#3. “An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.” – Warren Buffett

#4. “If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.” – Warren Buffett

#5. “Among the various propositions offered to you, if you invested in a very low cost index fund, where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years, you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.” – Warren Buffett

#6. “It is a terrible mistake for investors with long-term horizons, among them pension funds, college endowments, and savings-minded individuals, to measure their investment ‘risk’ by their portfolio’s ratio of bonds to stocks.” – Warren Buffett

#7. “It’s been an ideal period for investors. A climate of fear is their best friend. Those who invest only when commentators are upbeat end up paying a heavy price for meaningless reassurance.” – Warren Buffett

#8. “Beware the investment activity that produces applause. The great moves are usually greeted by yawns.” – Warren Buffett

#9. “Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.” – Warren Buffett

#10. “One can best prepare themselves for the economic future by investing in your own education. If you study hard and learn at a young age, you will be in the best circumstances to secure your future.” – Warren Buffett

#11. “If you like spending six to eight hours per week working on investments, do it. If you don’t, then dollar-cost average into index funds.” – Warren Buffett

#12. “Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies.” – Warren Buffett

#13. “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.” – Warren Buffett

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.

#14. “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.” – Warren Buffett

#15. “Remember that the stock market is a manic depressive.” – Warren Buffett

#16. “The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and above all, the durability of that advantage.” – Warren Buffett

#17. “Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.” – Warren Buffett

#18. “The one thing I will tell you is the worst investment you can have is cash. Everybody is talking about cash being king and all that sort of thing. Cash is going to become worthless over time. But good businesses are going to become worth more over time.” – Warren Buffett

#19. “Widespread fear is your friend as an investor because it serves up bargain purchases.” – Warren Buffett

#20. “There is nothing wrong with a ‘know nothing’ investor who realizes it. The problem is when you are a ‘know nothing’ investor but you think you know something.” – Warren Buffett

#21. “Success in investing doesn’t correlate with IQ. What you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.” – Warren Buffett

#22. “The most important investment you can make is in yourself.” – Warren Buffett

#23. “The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.” – Warren Buffett

#24. “The best chance to deploy capital is when things are going down.” – Warren Buffett

Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.

#25. “Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.” – Warren Buffett

#26. “The years ahead will occasionally deliver major market declines, even panics, that will affect virtually all stocks. No one can tell you when these traumas will occur.” – Warren Buffett

#27. “We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.” – Warren Buffett

#28. “Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts, the Depression, a dozen or so recessions and financial panics, oil shocks, a flu epidemic, and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.” – Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett On Money

#29. “After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them.” – Warren Buffett

#30. “Cash is to a business as oxygen is to an individual. Never thought about when it is present, the only thing in mind when it is absent.” – Warren Buffett

#31. “I won’t say if my candidate doesn’t win, and probably half the time they haven’t, I’m going to take my ball and go home.” – Warren Buffett

#32. “Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless.” – Warren Buffett

#33. “Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you’d be content to own it in the absence of any market.” – Warren Buffett

#34. “Buy into a company because you want to own it, not because you want the stock to go up.” – Warren Buffett

#35. “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 five years.” – Warren Buffett

#36. “Just pick a broad index like the S&P 500. Don’t put your money in all at once. Do it over a period of time.” – Warren Buffett

#37. “Many management teams are just deciding they’re going to buy X billions over X months. That’s no way to buy things. You buy when selling for less than they are worth. It’s not a complicated equation to figure out whether it is beneficial or not to repurchase shares.” – Warren Buffett

If returns are going to be 7 or 8% and you're paying 1% for fees, that makes an enormous difference in how much money you're going to have in retirement.

#38. “If returns are going to be 7 or 8% and you’re paying 1% for fees, that makes an enormous difference in how much money you’re going to have in retirement.” – Warren Buffett

#39. “You could take all the gold that’s ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what it’s worth at current gold prices, you could buy all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?” – Warren Buffett

#40. “If you don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future earnings, just forget it and move on.” – Warren Buffett

#41. “It’s better to have a partial interest in the Hope diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.” – Warren Buffett

#42. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett

#43. “Since I know of no way to reliably predict market movements, I recommend that you purchase Berkshire shares only if you expect to hold them for at least five years. Those who seek short-term profits should look elsewhere.” – Warren Buffett

#44. “When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients.” – Warren Buffett

#45. “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.” – Warren Buffett

#46. “When stock can be bought below a business’s value it is probably the best use of cash.” – Warren Buffett

#47. “Bitcoin has no unique value at all.” – Warren Buffett

#48. “If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.” – Warren Buffett

The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.

#49. “The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.” – Warren Buffett

#50. “You’re just hoping the next guy pays more. And you only feel you’ll find the next guy to pay more if he thinks he’s going to find someone that’s going to pay more. You aren’t investing when you do that, you’re speculating.” – Warren Buffett

#51. “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.” – Warren Buffett

#52. “You can’t borrow money at 18 or 20% and come out ahead.” – Warren Buffett

#53. “Spend your money and time wisely.” – Warren Buffett

#54. “Rule number 1 is never lose money. Rule number 2 is don’t forget rule number 1.” – Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett On Life

#55. “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” – Warren Buffett

#56. “Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.” – Warren Buffett

#57. “And so the important thing we do with managers, generally, is to find the .400 hitters and then not tell them how to swing.” – Warren Buffett

#58. “Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.” – Warren Buffett

#59. “Don’t get caught up with what other people are doing. Being a contrarian isn’t the key but being a crowd follower isn’t either. You need to detach yourself emotionally.” – Warren Buffett

#60. “One thing that could help would be to write down the reason you are buying a stock before your purchase. Write down “I am buying Microsoft at $300 billion because…” Force yourself to write this down. It clarifies your mind and discipline.” – Warren Buffett

#61. “Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.” – Warren Buffett

#62. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

#63. “It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.” – Warren Buffett

#64. “We want products where people feel like kissing you instead of slapping you.” – Warren Buffett

#65. “We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.” – Warren Buffett

I believe in giving my kids enough so they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.

#66. “I believe in giving my kids enough so they can do anything, but not so much that they can do nothing.” – Warren Buffett

#67. “Predicting rain doesn’t count, building the ark does.” – Warren Buffett

#68. “Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.” – Warren Buffett

#69. “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” – Warren Buffett

#70. “Charlie and I view the marketable common stocks that Berkshire owns as interests in businesses, not as ticker symbols to be bought or sold based on their “chart” patterns, the “target” prices of analysts, or the opinions of media pundits.” – Warren Buffett

#71. “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be a more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.” – Warren Buffett

#72. “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes.” – Warren Buffett

#73. “This does not bother Charlie Munger and me. Indeed, we enjoy such price declines if we have funds available to increase our positions.” – Warren Buffett

#74. “We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow’s obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits.” – Warren Buffett

#75. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.” – Warren Buffett

#76. “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” – Warren Buffett

#77. For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start. – Warren Buffett

#78. “Half of all coin-flippers will win their first toss. None of those winners has an expectation of profit if he continues to play the game.” – Warren Buffett

If you're in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%

#79. “If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%.” – Warren Buffett

#80. “Spend time with people better than you.” – Warren Buffett

#81. “I have no views as to where gold will be, but the one thing I can tell you is it won’t do anything between now and then except look at you. Whereas, you know, Coca-Cola will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo will be making a lot of money, and there will be a lot better to have a goose that keeps laying eggs than a goose that just sits there and eats insurance and storage and a few things like that.” – Warren Buffett

#82. “What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.” – Warren Buffett

#83. “Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.” – Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett On Simplicity

#84. “Live below your means and never show-off.” – Warren Buffett

#85. “American business and consequently a basket of stocks, is virtually certain to be worth far more in the years ahead.” – Warren Buffett

#86. “I just sit in my office and read all day.” – Warren Buffett

#87. “I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business.” – Warren Buffett

#88. “You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.” – Warren Buffett

#89. “If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.” – Warren Buffett

#90. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.” – Warren Buffett

#91. “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” – Warren Buffett

#92. “Stay away from it. It’s a mirage, basically. The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is a joke in my view.” – Warren Buffett

#93. “The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything, you can wait for your pitch.” – Warren Buffett

#94. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett

#95. “On the margin of safety, which means, don’t try and drive a 9,800-pound truck over a bridge that says its capacity is 10,000 pounds. But go down the road a little bit and find one that says the capacity is 15,000 pounds.” – Warren Buffett

#96. “Enjoy your work.” – Warren Buffett

#97. “Spend time to just sit and think.” – Warren Buffett

#98. “When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.” – Warren Buffett

#99. “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.” – Warren Buffett

#100. “Very successful people say ‘No’ to almost everything.” – Warren Buffett

#101. “Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick “no.” – Warren Buffett

#102. “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” – Warren Buffett

#103. “The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.” – Warren Buffett

#104. “Protect your reputation.” – Warren Buffett

#105. “Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.” – Warren Buffett

#106. “Chains of habits are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” – Warren Buffett

#107. “Too-big-to-fail is not a fallback position at Berkshire. Instead, we will always arrange our affairs so that any requirements for cash we may conceivably have will be dwarfed by our own liquidity.” – Warren Buffett

#108. “We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven’t learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.” – Warren Buffett

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

#109. “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffett

Final Thoughts

There are 109 inspiring Warren Buffett quotes.

The main takeaway is to keep investing and your finances simple.

You don’t need a complex plan for your money or to invest in highly talked about industries.

By simply being smart with your money and taking a long term, consistent approach, you will reach your financial dreams.

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