Value Investing Quotes: 25 Pages Of The Best

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.^{[citation needed]}

Our favourite 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.^{[citation needed]}

If you don’t feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don’t own it for 10 minutes.^{[citation needed]}

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

We will only do with your money what we would do with our own.^{[citation needed]}

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.^{[citation needed]}

“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.”^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

I really like my life. I’ve arranged my life so that I can do what I want.^{[citation needed]}

If you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.^{[citation needed]}

Views of government and Wall Street

This time Congress should listen to the slim accountants. The logic behind their thinking is simple:

If options aren’t a form of compensation, what are they?
If compensation isn’t an expense, what is it?
And if expenses shouldn’t go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?^{[citation needed]}

First, many in Wall Street – a community in which quality control is not prized – will sell investors anything they will buy.
- 2000 Letter to Shareholders

An irresistable footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities – at full prices they couldn’t buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.
- 1978 Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders

When returns on capital are ordinary, an earn-more-by-putting-up-more record is no great managerial achievement. You can get the same result personally while operating from your rocking chair. just quadruple the capital you commit to a savings account and you will quadruple your earnings. You would hardly expect hosannas for that particular accomplishment. Yet, retirement announcements regularly sing the praises of CEOs who have, say, quadrupled earnings of their widget company during their reign – with no one examining whether this gain was attributable simply to many years of retained earnings and the workings of compound interest.
- 1985 Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders