Warren Buffett

The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago.

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.

If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don't own it for 10 minutes.

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.

We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.

I've seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage -- leverage being borrowed money. You really don't need leverage in this world much. If you're smart, you're going to make a lot of money without borrowing.

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.

The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.

Never invest in a business you can't understand

If you have more than 120 or 130 I.Q. points, you can afford to give the rest away. You don't need extraordinary intelligence to succeed as an investor.

Cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless.

Never lie under any circumstances.

Good profits simply are not inconsistent with good behavior.

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

If principles can become dated, they're not principles.

Don't risk what is important to you, to get what is not important to you.

It's much easier to stay out of trouble now than to get out of trouble later.

Learning how to live is much more important than learning how to make a living.

The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine.

If you can tell me who your heroes are, I can tell you how you're going to turn out in life.