Buffett

• History does not tell you the probability of future financial things happening.
• The value of a business is the cash it's going to produce in the future.
• Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
• You try to be greedy when others are fearful and you try to be very fearful when others are greedy.
• 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.
• Rule number one: never lose money. Rule number two: never forget rule number one.
• Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.
• The disadvantage of being in any kind of a market type environment - and Wall Street would be the extreme - is that you get over stimulated. You think you have to do something every day.
• What we really want to do is buy businesses that we would be happy to own forever.
• Book value tells you what has been put in; intrinsic business value estimates what can be taken out.
• To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.
• Wall Street is the only place people ride to in a Rolls-Royce to get advice from people who ride the subway.
• If you want to know one question to ask in terms of determining whether somebody's got a good business or not, just ask them whether they can raise prices tomorrow.
• Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill.
• The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up.
• You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will.
• I like a business that, when it's not managed at all, still makes a lot of money. That's my kind of business.
• I have an ideal life. I get to do what I want to do everyday. And money can't buy any more than that.
• I don't want to buy any stock where if they close the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow for five years I won't be happy owning it. I buy a farm and I don't get a quote on it for five years and I'm happy if the farm does ok. I buy an apartment house, don't get a quote on it for five years - I'm happy if the apartment house produces the returns that I expect. But people buy a stock and they look at the price the next morning and they decide if they're doing well or not doing well. It's crazy because they're buying a piece of a business.
• I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches — representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you'd punched through the card, you couldn't make any more investments at all. Under those rules, you'd really think carefully about what you did, and you'd be forced to load up on what you'd really thought about. So you'd do so much better.