Top 500 Warren Buffett Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “We’re perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff.”

— Warren Buffett

402. “You can’t stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you’re smarter than he is and he’s doing these things and he’s getting rich.”

— Warren Buffett

403. “The purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible among those you want to have love you.”

— Warren Buffett

404. “Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”

— Warren Buffett

405. “If you hit a hole in one every hole, you wouldn’t play golf for very long.”

— Warren Buffett

406. “Failing conventionally is the route to go; as a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.”

— Warren Buffett

407. “During inflation, Goodwill is the gift that keeps on giving.”

— Warren Buffett

408. “Money will always flow toward opportunity, and there is an abundance of that in America.”

— Warren Buffett

409. “You don’t need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory investment returns. But if you aren’t, you must recognize your limitations and follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don’t swing for the fences.”

— Warren Buffett

410. “If horses had controlled investment decisions, there would have been no auto industry.”

— Warren Buffett

411. “Cash never makes us happy, but it’s better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire’s pocket than resting comfortably in someone else’s.”

— Warren Buffett

412. “If principles can become dated, they’re not principles.”

— Warren Buffett

413. “Is management candid with the shareholders?”

— Warren Buffett

414. “In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don’t.”

— Warren Buffett

415. “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 all 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.”

— Warren Buffett

416. “It’s us fun being a gorse when the tractor comes along, or the blacksmith when the car comes along.”

— Warren Buffett

417. “Our leaders have asked for ‘shared sacrifice.’ But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.”

— Warren Buffett

418. “We have embraced the 21st century by entering such cutting-edge industries as brick, carpet, insulation and paint. Try to control your excitement.”

— Warren Buffett

419. “I have this complicated procedure I go through every morning, which is to look in the mirror and decide what I’m going to do. And I feel at that point, everybody’s had their say.”

— Warren Buffett

420. “A CEO’s behavior has a huge impact on managers down the line.”

— Warren Buffett

421. “I don’t measure my life by the money I’ve made. Other people might, but certainly don’t.”

— Warren Buffett

422. “Of our 49 billion, we haven’t moved any to Bitcoin.”

— Warren Buffett

423. “Don’t settle for anything other than your passion – if you’re lucky enough to find it.”

— Warren Buffett

424. “I have no idea on timing. It’s easier to tell what will happen than when it will happen. I would say that what is going on in terms of trade policy is going to have very important consequences.”

— Warren Buffett

425. “You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping.”

— Warren Buffett

426. “I choose to work with every single person that I work with. That ends up being the most important factor. I don’t interact with people I don’t like or admire. That’s the key. It’s like marrying.”

— Warren Buffett

427. “To be successful, you should concentrate on the world of companies, not arcane accounting mathematics.”

— Warren Buffett

428. “You have to be able to communicate in life and probably schools underemphasize that. If you can’t talk to people or write, you’re giving up your potential.”

— Warren Buffett

429. “If we start deciding, based on guesses or emotions, whether we will or won’t participate in a business where we should have some long run edge, we’re in trouble.”

— Warren Buffett

430. “Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price.”

— Warren Buffett

431. “You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason.”

— Warren Buffett

432. “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.”

— Warren Buffett

433. “Although we deal with probabilities and expectations, the actual results can deviate substantially from such expectations, particularly on a short-term basis.”

— Warren Buffett

434. “SUPPOSE that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. This is a good one, he says enthusiastically. I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.”

— Warren Buffett

435. “I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand.”

— Warren Buffett

436. “When we really sit back with a smile on our face is when we run into a situation we can understand, where the facts are ascertainable and clear, and the course of action obvious.”

— Warren Buffett

437. “I knew a lot about what I did when I was 20. I had read a lot, and I aspired to learn everything I could about the subject.”

— Warren Buffett

438. “There are certain things that cannot be adequately explained to a virgin either by words or pictures.”

— Warren Buffett

439. “I’m just lucky to have been in the right place at the right time. Another place, another time, I wouldn’t have been as successful. Society enabled me to make my money and my money should go to society.”

— Warren Buffett

440. “Managers that always promise to ‘make the numbers’ will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.”

— Warren Buffett

441. “I have a wonderful family. I have a job that I love and wonderful people who help me with it. It can’t get any better than that.”

— Warren Buffett

442. “Buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn’t work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn’t going to work either.”

— Warren Buffett

443. “Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.”

— Warren Buffett

444. “In the long run managements stressing accounting appearance over economic substance usually achieve little of either.”

— Warren Buffett

445. “I have a house that I bought 55 years ago. It’s warm in the winter; it’s cool in the summer. It has everything I wanted, plus it has all kinds of good memories. Like my kids, I have good thoughts about that. I can’t imagine living any better.”

— Warren Buffett

446. “Too often, a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse, and long-standing friends.”

— Warren Buffett

447. “It takes 150 years to build an investment bank and only five minutes to convince you to sell me preferred stock in it at a 10% interest rate.”

— Warren Buffett

448. “A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth.”

— Warren Buffett

449. “I tell college students, when you get to be my age you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you.”

— Warren Buffett

450. “When bills come due, only cash is legal tender. Don’t leave home without it.”

— Warren Buffett