Warren Buffet – Q 1121

• If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians. – Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders (February 2009)

• Degree of difficulty counts in the Olympics; it doesn’t count in business. You don’t get any extra points for the fact that something’s very hard to do, so you might as well step over one-foot bars rather than try to jump over seven-foot bars. – CNBC, October 18, 2010

• How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge. – Businessweek, July 5, 1999

• I don’t know a thing now that I didn’t know at 19 when I read (Benjamin Graham’sThe Intelligent Investor). For eight years prior to that I was a chartist. I loved all that stuff. I had charts coming out of my ears. Then, all of a sudden a fellow explains to me that you don’t need all that, just buy something for less than it’s worth. – Letter to Notre Dame faculty, spring 1991

• The future is never clear; you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values. – Forbes, August 6, 1979

• If you really know businesses, you probably shouldn’t own six of them. If you can identify six wonderful businesses, that is all of the diversification you need, and you’re going to make a lot of money, and I guarantee you that going into a seventh one… , rather than putting more money into your first one, has got to be a terrible mistake. Very few people get rich on their seventh best idea. – Colloquium at the University of Florida, October 15, 1998

• Newton lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.” If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases. – Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, February 2006

• A simple rule dictates my buying. Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. – New York Times, October 16, 2008

Source: The Oracle Speaks

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