Warren Buffett Quotes

While enthusiasm may be necessary for great accomplishments elsewhere, on Wall Street it almost invariably leads to disaster

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

Speculation is a hard and trying business, and a speculator must be on the job all the time or he'll soon have no job to be on.

We see that hyperactivity and reward areas are important when the bubble's rising. People getting caught up in it. We also see areas involving mentalizing, which means thinking about other people: Who's buying? Who's selling? Do they know something? We see emotional areas before the crash that indicate a sense of uncertainty or dread.

Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything.

Banks may be considered as the primary source of "paper speculation," and only the foster the spirit of gambling in paper, in lands, in canal schemes, town lot schemes, manufacturing schemes and whatever could hit the madness of the day.

Speculation, in its broadest sense, is not an evil in itself, but the contrary, and relieves public distress far oftener than it creates it.

Gambling is entertainment... Financial markets, what one often refers to as speculation, is really the force by which we move capital to the best and highest use.

I get very worried that people that are buying bitcoins don't really understand what they're participating in other than the headline stories that it keeps going higher and 'I want to make sure I don't miss this opportunity to make some money.'

Betting that markets will be 'volatile' is like betting the weather will be partly cloudy. It's a smart-sounding strategy that doesn't mean much.

Creating a Financial Transactions Tax would go a long way to curbing short-term speculative trading, including high-frequency trading.

It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.

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

I knew a guy who had $5 million and owned his house free and clear. But he wanted to make a bit more money to support his spending, so at the peak of the internet bubble he was selling puts on internet stocks. He lost all of his money and his house and now works in a restaurant. It's not a smart thing for the country to legalize gambling [in the stock market] and make it very accessible.

You must never delude yourself into thinking that you're investing when you're speculating.

Speculator: One who bought stocks that went down.

The idea that it's smart to allow Wall Street firms, with this "too big to fail" imprimatur, to become hedge funds again - it's unconscionable. You're essentially saying we're going to take some elites in our society and let them roll the bones in the marketplace, and if it works out they get rich, and if it doesn't work out the taxpayer comes in again. That seems absolutely crazy to me. That seems to be where they're headed. I mean, maybe they're not and I'm wrong. Maybe they'll do sensible things. It's hard to know! There doesn't seem to be a plan.

It's the greatest game I ever saw. You can't lose. Everybody buys to sell and nobody buys to keep. What's worrying me is who is going to be the last owner. It's just like an auction; the only one stuck is the last one.

No one was responsible for the great Wall Street crash. No one engineered the speculation that preceded it. Both were the product of free choice and decision of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

The longer I operated on Wall Street the more distrustful I became of tips and inside information of every kind. Given time, I believe that inside information can break the Bank of England

The [stock] market,like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.

In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety.

It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.

Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wall Mart Street

I'm not sure most of the people that get caught up in the middle of a bubble can be described as irrational. It seems pretty rational to buy a house and flip it in the next few weeks at a profit when that's been happening for along time.