Warren Buffett Quotes

An argument is made that there are just too many question marks about the near future; wouldn't it be better to wait until things clear up a bit? You know the prose: "Maintain buying reserves until current uncertainties are resolved," etc. Before reaching for that crutch, face up to two unpleasant facts: The future is never clear and you pay a very high price for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

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.

Anyone who says he is an expert in the market is lying to you. There is no such thing.

Wall Street, in the main, hates uncertainty, which manifests itself in depressed share prices of companies whose prospects lack 'visibility.' But where the market can err is in confusing uncertainty with risk.

Investing is about predicting the future, and the future is inherently unpredictable. Therefore, the only way you can do better is to assess all the facts and truly know what you know and know what you don't know. That's your probability edge.

What's hot today isn't likely to be hot tomorrow. The stock market reverts to fundamental returns over the long run. Don't follow the herd.

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

I got an E-Trade account. Turns out I can turn $1,000 into $420 in less than a week. Sure, I had to pay some fees.

If you roll dice, you know that the odds are one in six that the dice will come up on a particular side. So you can calculate the risk. But, in the stock market, such computations are bull - you don't even know how many sides the dice have!

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

I'm not sure that the current value of the NASDAQ is justified, but I'm not sure that it isn't.

Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long term values.

Anything can happen in stock markets and you ought to conduct your affairs so that if the most extraordinary events happen, that you're still around to play the next day.

You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.

As you know President Bush has been traveling around the country trying to sell his new Social Security plan. He wants to take our retirement money and invest it in the stock market. He says nothing can go wrong. I'll mention that to Martha Stewart the next time I see her.

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.

Index funds eliminate the risks of individual stocks, market sectors, and manager selection. Only stock market risk remains.

The speed at which a business success is recognized, furthermore, is not that important as long as the company's intrinsic value is increasing at a satisfactory rate. In fact, delayed recognition can be an advantage: It may give us the chance to buy more of a good thing at a bargain price.

Nobody really knows what the market is going to do, but it sure looks like we are going to have a lot more volatility.

Buying stock is exactly the same thing as going to a casino, only with no cocktail service.

Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.

In the world of securities, courage becomes the supreme virtue after adequate knowledge and a tested judgment are at hand.

Cheer the bull, or cheer the bear; cheer both, and you will be trampled and eaten.