born 1930
Warren Buffett is an American investor, business tycoon, and philanthropist, widely considered one of the most successful investors in the world. He is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and is known for his value investing approach and long-term perspective in building wealth.
Surround yourself with people who push you to do better. No drama. No negativity. Just higher goals, positive energy, and growth.
It is better to be approximately right, than precisely wrong.
You want to enjoy every day. You want to have a job you love — and you want to work with people you like and admire and trust. If you've got that, you are a long way home.
We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
Basically, when you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.
I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
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.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.
The best thing you can do is to be exceptionally good at something.
Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.
It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.
Never risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.
The smartest side to take in a bidding war is the losing side.
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shuts down for 10 years.
I’ve mainly learned by reading. I don't think I have any original ideas.
Give kids enough so that they could do anything, but not so much that they’d do nothing.
The only way to get love is to be lovable. It's very irritating if you have a lot of money. You'd like to think you could write a check: 'I'll buy a million dollars' worth of love.' But it doesn't work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Never invest in a business you cannot understand.
You cannot make a good deal with a bad person.
The most elusive of human goals: keeping things simple and remembering what you set out to do.
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
If you learn reasonably well from other people, you don't have to get any new ideas or do much on your own. You can just apply the best of what you see.
My dad was always very forgiving of my misbehavior. He'd just say, 'I know you can do better.' That was very powerful stuff… because I could do better. I knew it and he knew it. It's nice to have somebody have faith in you
The most dangerous distractions are the ones you love, but that don’t love you back.
If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.
In my whole life I’ve never been good at something I wasn’t very interested in. It just doesn’t work. There’s no substitute for strong interest.
The more you learn, the more you'll earn.
Time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone poorly positioned.
You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time.
If you say no to a thing, then you’re saying no to one thing. If you say yes to a thing, you actually say no to every other thing during that period of time.
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.