Quotes by buffet (Taken from wikiquote.org)

• "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."
   
• "For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn’t work is when you start doing things that you don't understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up. "

• "Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well."

• "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."- 1981 Chairman's Letters to Shareholders

• "Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results."- 1974 Letter to Shareholders

• "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." - Berkshire Hathaway 1998 Annual Meeting

• "If you're an investor, you're looking on what the asset is going to do, if you're a speculator, you're commonly focusing on what the price of the object is going to do, and that's not our game."- 1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

• "Despite three years of falling prices, which have significantly improved the attractiveness of common stocks, we still find very few that even mildly interest us. That dismal fact is testimony to the insanity of valuations reached during The Great Bubble. Unfortunately, the hangover may prove to be proportional to the binge."- March 2003

• On acquiring bad companies for cheap prices: "In my early days as a manager I, too, dated a few toads. They were cheap dates - I've never been much of a sport - but my results matched those of acquirers who courted higher-price toads. I kissed and they croaked."

• "I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out."- Oct. 2003 talking with Wharton MBA students

• "The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes."- Nov. 2002 talking with students at Gaston Hall

On Circle of Competency

• "There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do." - Morningstar Interview

Intelligent Decision Making

• "Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgement became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart - and not too smart at that - only a very few times. Indeed, we'll now settle for one good idea a year. (Charlie says it's my turn.)"

• "The fact that people will be full of greed, fear or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable." - Financial Review, 1985

• "I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."- lecturing to a group of students at Columbia U. He was 21 years old.

• "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." - 1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

• "The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage." - July 1999 at Herb Allen's Sun Valley, Idaho Retreat

• "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." - 1990 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders

• "Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing." - BusinessWeek Interview June 25 1999

• "Our future rates of gain will fall far short of those achieved in the past. Berkshire's capital base is now simply too large to allow us to earn truly outsized returns. If you believe otherwise, you should consider a career in sales but avoid one in mathematics (bearing in mind that there are really only three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't). " - 1998 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders

• "Time is the enemy of the poor business and the friend of the great business. If you have a business that's earning 20%-25% on equity, time is your friend. But time is your enemy if your money is in a low return business."- 1998 Berkshire Annual Meeting

• "Ben's Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets, dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising 'Take two aspirins'?"- 1987 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders

• "We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet." - Berkshire Hathaway Owners Manual

• "If you expect to be a net saver during the next 5 years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period?"Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall."This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices."- 1997 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders

Inactivity as Intelligent

• "We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely." - 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

• "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."

• "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

On Diversification

• "The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it."- 1993 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders

• "Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing."

On Margin of Safety

• "If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety..."- 1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Efficient Market Hypothesis

• “I’d be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were always efficient.”

General Rules

• "Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1."

• "It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

• "You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right—and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else."

• "Our favorite holding period is forever." Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, 1988

• "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact."

• "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."

• "If you don't know jewelry, know the jeweller."

• "If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don't own it for 10 minutes."

• "There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult."

• "One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over... your problem won’t improve with age."

• "A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought."

• "In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity."

• "If a business does well, the stock eventually follows."

• "The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect... You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd."

• "The future is never clear, and you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty is the friend of the buyer of long-term values."

• "It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked."

• "We will only do with your money what we would do with our own."

• "Occasionally, a man must rise above principles."

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

• "Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked."

• When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: "we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year."

• "I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that. “I’m paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because...” If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you’ll make a lot of money."

• "You ought to be able to explain why you’re taking the job you’re taking, why you’re making the investment you’re making, or whatever it may be. And if it can’t stand applying pencil to paper, you’d better think it through some more. And if you can’t write an intelligent answer to those questions, don’t do it."

• "Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

Benjamin Graham and Philip Fisher

• Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed. (Benjamin Graham)

• The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means.. that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase. (Benjamin Graham)

• I don't want a lot of good investments - I want a few outstanding ones . (Philip Fisher)

• If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is - almost never. . (Philip Fisher(

• The greatest investment reward comes to those who by good luck or good sense find the occasional company that over the years can grow in sales and profits far more than industry as a whole. (Philip Fisher(

• The business 'grapevine' is a remarkable thing. It is amazing what an accurate picture of the relative points of strength and weakness of each company in an industry can be obtained from a representative cross-section of the opinions of those who in one way or another are concerned with any particular company. (Philip Fisher( 

• When companies deteriorate, they usually do so for one of two reasons: Either there has been a deterioration of management, or the company no longer has the prospect of increasing the markets for its product in the way it formerly did. . (Philip Fisher(

• Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything. (Benjamin Graham(