Warren Buffett: Likeness

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

“I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”

Warren Buffett

As quoted in Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist (1995), by Roger Lowenstein, p. 77

Thinking

“All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.”

Warren Buffett

Interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974)
Variant: The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don't have to swing at everything — you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you're a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, "Swing, you bum!"
1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in The Tao of Warren Buffett by Mary Buffett and David Clark p. 145
Context: I call investing the greatest business in the world … because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U. S. Steel at 39! and nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.

Waiting

“It’s like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.”

Warren Buffett

To Barack Obama, as quoted in The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), Ch. 5
Context: The free market’s the best mechanism ever devised to put resources to their most efficient and productive use. … The government isn’t particularly good at that. But the market isn’t so good at making sure that the wealth that’s produced is being distributed fairly or wisely. Some of that wealth has to be plowed back into education, so that the next generation has a fair chance, and to maintain our infrastructure, and provide some sort of safety net for those who lose out in a market economy. And it just makes sense that those of us who’ve benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share. … When you get rid of the estate tax, you’re basically handing over command of the country’s resources to people who didn’t earn it. It’s like choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the children of all the winners at the 2000 Games.

Children , Game

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Warren Buffett
Change

“It's nice to have a lot of money, but you know, you don't want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise, it's a little like saving sex for your old age.”

Warren Buffett
Money , Age , Sex

“Upon leaving [the derivatives business], our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: "I liked you better before I got to know you so well."”

Warren Buffett

2008 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Feeling , Business , Country

“I eat like a normal 6-year-old, but if you look at the mortality statistics, I mean, 6-year-olds don’t die very often.”

Warren Buffett

"Part 2 — Billionaire Warren Buffett says GOP health reform bills are relief for the rich" http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/part-2-billionaire-warren-buffett-says-gop-health-reform-bills-relief-rich/ PBS Newshour (27 June 2017)
Other

“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

“Our performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market … in a year when the general market had a substantial advance, I would be well satisfied to match the advance of the averages.”

Warren Buffett

Second annual letter to Limited Partners (1957) http://www.safalniveshak.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Warren-Buffett-Berkshire-Letters-1957-2012.pdf
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

“The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities—that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future—will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”

Warren Buffett

2000 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2000.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Money , Hate , People , Behavior

“We have tried occasionally to buy toads at bargain prices with results that have been chronicled in past reports. Clearly our kisses fell flat. We have done well with a couple of princes — but they were princes when purchased. At least our kisses didn’t turn them into toads. And, finally, we have occasionally been quite successful in purchasing fractional interests in easily-identifiable princes at toad-like prices.”

Warren Buffett

1981 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1981.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Kiss , Success , Past

“I like to study failure, actually. My partner says, "I want to know where I'll die so I'll never go there." We want to see what has caused businesses to go bad. The biggest thing that kills them is complacency…. The danger would always be that you rest on your laurels.”

Warren Buffett

Rules for success

Failure , Business , Study

“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

“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.”

Warren Buffett

1992 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1992.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Children

“I'll tell you why I like the cigarette business. … It costs a penny to make. Sell it for a dollar. It's addictive. And there's fantastic brand loyalty.”

Warren Buffett

As quoted in Barbarians at the Gate : The Fall of RJR Nabisco (1989), by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar

Business , Loyalty

“You're dealing with a lot of silly people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be O.K.”

Warren Buffett

On being dispassionate and patient in investments, in an interview in Forbes magazine (1 November 1974); he is contrasting soft-drinks to intoxicating beverages in this example; Buffett eventually became a major investor in Coca-Cola.

People