Warren Buffett In His Own Words, Plus Some Other Timeless Quotes

I first wrote this article in 2007. By page views, it is the most popular article I have ever published, having been read by more than 15,000 people.

The original article contained 23 timeless quotes by Warren Buffett. In this re-write, I have removed a couple of the originals and replaced them with others that I like better. I have also included a few other great quotes from such sages as Yogi Berra and Woody Allen. Not all of them were about investing, but all can be applied to investing.

Warren Buffett’s best sound bites of all time on being a sensible investor.

1. Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.

2. Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future.

3. Never invest in a business you cannot understand.

4. I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

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

6. If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

7. It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

8. Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

9. For some reason people take their cues from price action rather than from values. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

10. Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.

11. It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

12. You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.

13. What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.

14. You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.

15. 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.

16. You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.

17. When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

18. The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago.

19. Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.

20. Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

21. Many in Wall Street—a community in which quality control is not prized—will sell investors anything they will buy.

22. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

23. Our favorite holding period is forever.

And here are the quotes from a few others:

1. Hindsight is much more precise than foresight but not as valuable. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

2. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else. (Yogi Berra)

3. It ain't over 'til it's over. (Yogi Berra).

4. Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. (Christopher Robin to Pooh, written by A. A. Milne)

5. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. (Winston Churchill)

6. Investing is easy. Buy stocks that go up. If they don't go up, don't buy them. (Will Rodgers)

7. Eighty percent of success is showing up. (Woody Allen).

8. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong—but that's the way to bet. (Damon Runyan).