Warren Buffett citations

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“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

“When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.”

“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

“Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.”

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

“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.”

“You’ve gotta keep control of your time, and you can’t unless you say no. You can’t let people set your agenda in life.”

“People always ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most.”

“Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.”

“Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.”

“I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire.”

“Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.”

“You know… you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.”

“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.”

“[Gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”

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

“I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”

“Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.”

“A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

“be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy.”

“An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.”

“I am not a businessman, I am an artist”

“We're more comfortable in that kind of business. It means we miss a lot of very big winners. But we wouldn't know how to pick them out anyway. It also means we have very few big losers - and that's quite helpful over time. We're perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff.”

“It’s simply to say that managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers is the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.”

“Confidence comes back one at a time, but fear, is instantaneous.
With an interview with Tae Kim, CNBC, 12 Sept 2018”

“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."”

“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.”

“Those who attended [the annual meeting] last year saw your Chairman pitch to Ernie Banks. This encounter proved to be the titanic duel that the sports world had long awaited. After the first few pitches — which were not my best, but when have I ever thrown my best? — I fired a brushback at Ernie just to let him know who was in command. Ernie charged the mound, and I charged the plate. But a clash was avoided because we became exhausted before reaching each other.”

“Capitalism is all about somebody coming and trying to take the castle. Now what you need is …. you need a castle that has some durable competitive advantage — some castle that has a moat around it.”