Top 500 Warren Buffett Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.”

— Warren Buffett

352. “We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.”

— Warren Buffett

353. “Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior.”

— Warren Buffett

354. “We make investment decisions based on our evaluation of the most profitable combination of probabilities.”

— Warren Buffett

355. “It’s not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble.”

— Warren Buffett

356. “The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes.”

— Warren Buffett

357. “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”

— Warren Buffett

358. “Problems in a company are like cockroaches in the kitchen. You will never find just one.”

— Warren Buffett

359. “You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you.”

— Warren Buffett

360. “We do not have, nor have had, and never will have an opinion about where the stock market, interest rates, or business activity will be a year from now.”

— Warren Buffett

361. “John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don’t try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.”

— Warren Buffett

362. “We intend to continue our practice of working only with people whom we like and admire. This policy not only maximizes our chances for good results, it also ensures us an extraordinarily good time.”

— Warren Buffett

363. “The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.”

— Warren Buffett

364. “Working with people who cause your stomach to churn seems much like marrying for money – probably a bad idea under any circumstances, but absolute madness if you are already rich.”

— Warren Buffett

365. “My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.”

— Warren Buffett

366. “With enough insider information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year.”

— Warren Buffett

367. “If I subscribed to the efficient market theory I would still be delivering papers.”

— Warren Buffett

368. “When the brothel burns down, even the pretty girls have to run out.”

— Warren Buffett

369. “What you really want to do in investments is figure out what’s important and knowable. If it’s unimportant or unknowable you forget about it.”

— Warren Buffett

370. “The key to life is to figure out who to be the batboy for.”

— Warren Buffett

371. “Having first rate people on the team is more important than designing hierarchies and clarifying who reports to whom.”

— Warren Buffett

372. “In other words, the percentage change in book value in any given year is likely to be reasonably close to that year’s change in intrinsic value.”

— Warren Buffett

373. “Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.”

— Warren Buffett

374. “There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.”

— Warren Buffett

375. “I wouldn’t mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge.”

— Warren Buffett

376. “Confidence in markets and in institutions, it’s a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don’t even think about it. It’s indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it’s gone for five minutes, it’s the only thing to think about.”

— Warren Buffett

377. “Occasionally, a man must rise above principles.”

— Warren Buffett

378. “Credit worthiness is like virginity, it can be preserved but not restored very easily, so it is crazy to play around with it.”

— Warren Buffett

379. “Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it’s the lack of change that appeals to me. I don’t think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That’s the kind of business I like.”

— Warren Buffett

380. “Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.”

— Warren Buffett

381. “The greater the potential for reward in the value portfolio, the less risk there is.”

— Warren Buffett

382. “While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.”

— Warren Buffett

383. “We set no volume goals in our insurance business generally-and certainly not in reinsurance-as virtually any volume can be achieved if profitability standards are ignored.”

— Warren Buffett

384. “I make plenty of mistakes and I’ll make plenty more mistakes, too. That’s part of the game. You’ve just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.”

— Warren Buffett

385. “I put heavy weight on certainty. It’s not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they’re worth.”

— Warren Buffett

386. “Sound investing can make you very wealthy if you’re not in too big a hurry.”

— Warren Buffett

387. “I can’t promise results, but I can promise a common destiny.”

— Warren Buffett

388. “Personally, I really hope I can treat everyone equally. I think I have done a pretty good job so far but I know I can do it better.”

— Warren Buffett

389. “Does management resist the institutional imperative?”

— Warren Buffett

390. “You need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.”

— Warren Buffett

391. “A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.”

— Warren Buffett

392. “I view derivatives as time bombs, both for the parties that deal in them and the economic system.”

— Warren Buffett

393. “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone – not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 – shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”

— Warren Buffett

394. “I know what I want to do, and it makes sense to get going.”

— Warren Buffett

395. “Good big decisions do not take time at all, if they do you are in trouble.”

— Warren Buffett

396. “Investment ideas, like women are often more exciting than punctual.”

— Warren Buffett

397. “You should invest like a Catholic marries: for life.”

— Warren Buffett

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

— Warren Buffett

399. “Emotional makeup is more important than technical skill.”

— Warren Buffett

400. “When they get their ego involved, people do things they shouldn’t do.”

— Warren Buffett