Warren Buffett Quotes

I'm happy to make returns of 4% to 6% a year on my real estate portfolio. If inflation comes along I'll be able to increase rent and have capital appreciation roughly in line with inflation.

In pharma or in information, you have to invest for three or four years, and then you start seeing returns.

I don't think that Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO (leveraged buyout) business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits. All the jobs that he talks about came from Staples. That was a very early venture stage deal. That, you know they got out of long before it got to its current size.

Ignore the stock market, ignore the economy, and buy a business you understand.

Anyone who prefers owning part of your company to being paid in cash reveals a preference for the long term and a commitment to increasing your company's value in the future.

Investment philosophy is the clear understanding that by owning shares of stocks he owns businesses, not pieces of paper.

I have no views as to where it 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 (KO) will be making money, and I think Wells Fargo (WFC) will be making a lot of money and there will be a lot - and it's a lot - it's 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.

If your fund doesn't last for the long term, how can you invest for the long term?

Wrigley is a great business, but that doesn't solve the problem. Buying great businesses at advantageous prices is very tough.

People ought to invest in us because they like our company and the way they run it. We still do quarterly earnings guidance, but we tell people openly that they ought to look at the company for the long term and that's how they ought to invest.

A LOT OF PEOPLE DO NOT INVEST IN BUSINESS.. THEY INVEST IN BUSY-NESS (They Purchase A Job)

For all long-term investors, there is only one objective-maximum total real return after taxes.

I think if you had a capital-gains system where the long, patient capital would actually be rewarded, nanosecond capital turning would not be.

Equities will do well over time - you just have to avoid getting excited when other people are getting excited.

Young people, under the social contract, suggest a long term investment. What we have today is a government that believes that young people - since they are a long term investment - are a liability. This is system that only believes in short-term investments.

If you own a wonderful business...the best thing to do is keep it. All you're going to do is trade your wonderful business for a whole bunch of cash, which isn't as good as the business, and you got the problem of investing in other businesses, and you probably paid a tax in between. So my advice to anybody who owns a wonderful business is keep it.

Most people put money in their piggy bank. I buy a goose that lays golden eggs over and over again. That's what an asset is.

If you're going to invest in an Internet stock, you must be a long-term investor.

Allowing short selling is allowing people to sell - instead of having to buy the stock and then sell it, which doesn't do much; allow them to sell it, and then buy it. In which case they can express that information and the idea is that you would get more accurate valuation of companies by letting people express both their positive information and their negative information through either long or short selling.

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.

Finding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That's your opportunity cost. That's what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn't changed at all. That's why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine.

The commission of the investment sins listed above is not limited to 'the little guy.' Huge institutional investors, viewed as a group, have long underperformed the unsophisticated index-fund investor who simply sits tight for decades. A major reason has been fees: Many institutions pay substantial sums to consultants who, in turn, recommend high-fee managers. And that is a fool's game.

It's quite clear that stocks are cheaper than bonds. I can't imagine anybody having bonds in their portfolio when they can own equities, a diversified group of equities. But people do because they, the lack of confidence. But that's what makes for the attractive prices. If they had their confidence back, they wouldn't be selling at these prices. And believe me, it will come back over time.

I presumably lost $150,000 in the depression of 1937—on my one stock investment—because I did everything Lehman Brothers told me. I said, well, this is a fool’s procedure . . . buying stock in other people’s businesses.