Warren Buffett: Doing

Warren Buffett is American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Warren Buffett: 292   quotes 24   likes

“I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing — and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.”

Warren Buffett

To Barack Obama, as quoted in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), Ch. 5
Context: I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner.
But I was lucky enough to be born in a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing — and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.

Love , Money , Education , Law

“The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter.”

Warren Buffett

Speaking at a political fundraiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York, as quoted in Henry Goldman, "Buffett, at Clinton Fund-Raiser, Says Congress Favors the Rich" in Bloomberg (27 June 2007) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aks_E_vUEip8
Context: The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you're in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.

Parting

“In the stock market you do not base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational.”

Warren Buffett

Quoted in The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy (2000), p. 112, and Think, Act, and Invest Like Warren Buffett: The Winning Strategy to Help You Achieve Your Financial and Life Goals (2012), p. 22 <!-- also in -->
Context: I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge. … The approach and strategies [of bridge and stock investing] are very similar. In the stock market you do not base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. With bridge, you need to adhere to a disciplined bidding system. While there is no one best system, there is one that works best for you. Once you choose a system, you need to stick with it.

Thinking , Decision

“You're doing calculations all the time.”

Warren Buffett

On the game of bridge, as quoted in Forbes (2 June 1997); also quoted in The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy (2000), p. 112
Context: It’s a game of a million inferences. There are a lot of things to draw inferences from — cards played and not played. These inferences tell you something about the probabilities. It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

Time

“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”

Warren Buffett

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesberman/2014/04/20/the-three-essential-warren-buffett-quotes-to-live-by/ "The Three Essential Warren Buffett Quotes To Live By" forbes.com (20 April 2014)
Quotes from the press
Variant: Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

“In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.”

Warren Buffett
Love , People , World , Business

“I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20.”

Warren Buffett
Age , Personality

“The most common cause of low prices is pessimism — some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.”

Warren Buffett

1990 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1990.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Optimism , Business , Time

“Of course, Charlie and I can identify only a few Inevitables, even after a lifetime of looking for them. Leadership alone provides no certainties: Witness the shocks some years back at General Motors, IBM and Sears, all of which had enjoyed long periods of seeming invincibility. Though some industries or lines of business exhibit characteristics that endow leaders with virtually insurmountable advantages, and that tend to establish Survival of the Fattest as almost a natural law, most do not. Thus, for every Inevitable, there are dozens of Impostors, companies now riding high but vulnerable to competitive attacks.”

Warren Buffett

1996 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1996.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Law , Business , Nature

“We're going to move a lot of crude (oil) in this country, and we have to learn how to do it very safely.”

Warren Buffett

http://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/buffett:-moving-oil-by-rail-safely-is-a-major-industry-concern-279336 "Buffett: Moving Oil By Rail Safely Is A Major Industry Concern" Investing.com (24 April 2014)
Quotes from the press

Learning , Country

“If you invested in a very low cost index fund — where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.”

Warren Buffett

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (2004), as quoted at The Buffett http://www.thebuffett.com/quotes.html

Money , People , Time

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.”

Warren Buffett

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239763 "10 Brilliant Quotes From Warren Buffett, America's Second-Richest Person " entrepreneur.com (13 November 2014)
Quotes from the press

Life , People , Business , Thinking

“People will always try to stop you doing the right thing if it is unconventional.”

Warren Buffett

As quoted in "My $650,100 Lunch with Warren Buffett" by Guy Spier, in TIME (30 June 2008) http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1819293,00.html

People

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

Warren Buffett

As quoted in Corporate Survival: The Critical Importance of Sustainability Risk Management (2005) by Dan Robert Anderson, p. 138

Thinking