Warren Buffett

Brilliance is the ability to simplify a mass amount of information into a simple yes/no decision.

Don’t sleepwalk through life. Find something that you really enjoy doing, if you can do it. Not everybody is lucky enough to be able to find that, but it ought to be your goal.

What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.

The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.

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.

My partner Charlie Munger says there is only three ways a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies and leverage.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.

I don't even think it's important that every person go to college at all. I actually was not keen on going to college myself. Depending on what your interests are in life, I don't think it's for everybody. There ought to be a reason you're going.

My life has been a product of compound interest. Nothing more. Nothing less. And nothing brilliant.

Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shuts down for 10 years.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

Surround yourself with people who push you to do better. No drama. No negativity. Just higher goals, positive energy, and growth.

I’ve mainly learned by reading. I don't think I have any original ideas.

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.

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

Give kids enough so that they could do anything, but not so much that they’d do nothing.

I’d give up a year of my life to eat what I like.

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.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.

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

We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.

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

The most dangerous distractions are the ones you love, but that don’t love you back.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.

The five most dangerous words in business are: Everybody else is doing it.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character.

Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

And idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.

The best thing you can do is to be exceptionally good at something.

You don’t have to do exceptional things to get exceptional results.

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.

Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.

Never invest in a business you cannot understand.

The more you learn, the more you'll earn.

The goal of investment is to find situations where it is safe not to diversify.

You cannot make a good deal with a bad person.

Time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone poorly positioned.

It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

When you pay high for the priceless, you’re getting it cheap.

You don't have to be brilliant, only a little bit wiser than the other guys, on average, for a long, long time.

Never risk what you have and need for what you don’t have and don’t need.

The most elusive of human goals: keeping things simple and remembering what you set out to do.

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.

The smartest side to take in a bidding war is the losing side.

You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.