Quotes from Warren Buffett

It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

Anyone can read what I read, this is a fair playing field

He is also experienced. Though I don't know Ralph's age, I do know that, like many of our managers, he is over 65. At Berkshire, we look to performance, not to the calendar. Charlie and I, at 71 and 64 respectively, now keep George Foreman's picture on our desks. You can make book that our scorn for a mandatory retirement age will grow stronger every year.

The key is having more information than the other guy – then analysing it right and using it rationally.

The happiest people do not necessarily have the best things. They simply appreciate the things they have.

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

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.

My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest.

We do not talk one-on-one to large institutional investors or analysts, but rather treat all shareholders the same.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything

The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

Investing is an activity in which consumption today is foregone in an attempt to allow greater consumption at a later date. "Risk" is the possibility that this objective won't be attained. By that standard, purportedly "risk-free" long-term bonds in 2012 were a far riskier investment than a long- term investment in common stocks. At that time, even a 1% annual rate of inflation between 2012 and 2017 would have decreased the purchasing-power of the government bond

If you can't communicate, it's like winking at a girl in the dark.

We do not follow the common practice of talking one-on-one with large institutional investors or analysts, treating them instead as we do all other shareholders. There is no one more important to us than the shareholder of limited means who trusts us with a substantial portion of his or her savings. As I run the company day-to-day — and as I write this letter — that is the shareholder whose image is in my mind.

Our managers are totally in charge of their personal schedules. Second, we give each a simple mission: Just run your business as if: (1) you own 100% of it; (2) it is the only asset in the world that you and your family have or will ever have; and (3) you can't sell or merge it for at least a century.

Financial staying power requires a company to maintain three strengths under all circumstances: (1) a large and reliable stream of earnings; (2) massive liquid assets; and (3) no significant near-term cash requirements. Ignoring that last necessity is what usually leads companies to experience unexpected problems.

Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy

For 240 years, it's been a terrible mistake to bet against America.

My partner, Charlie, says that there's only three ways that a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies and leverage.

A cumulation of small managerial stupidities will produce a major stupidity—not a major triumph.

Cash, though, is to a business as oxygen is to an individual: never thought about when it is present, the only thing in mind when it is absent.

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone's guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

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.