If you don't get it ... you don't get it.

The best buys have been when the number almost tell you not to. Then you feel so strongly about the product. Almost every business we bought is takes 5 or 10 minutes in terms of analysis. If you don't know enough to understand the business instantly, a couple months of analysis won't change that too much.

- Warren Buffett

IPO

An IPO is like a negotiated transaction - the seller chooses when to come public - and it's unlikely to be a time that's favourable to you.

- Warren Buffett

Forget about 'Option'

You can be highly successful as an investor without having the slightest ability to value an option. What students should be learning is how to value a business. That's what investing is all about.

- Warren Buffett

Securities markets would give a bigger discount than negotiated transactions

Our experience has been that pro-rata portions of truly outstanding businesses sometimes sell in the securities markets at very large discounts from the prices they would command in negotiated transactions involving entire companies.

- Warren Buffett

Economy and the Indexes may not relate very well

During these seventeen years (1964-81), the size of the economy grew fivefold. The sales of the Fortune five hundred companies grew more than fivefold. Yet, during these seventeen years, the stock market went exactly nowhere.

- Warren Buffett

Old saying

As the old saying goes, what the wise man does in the beginning, fools do in the end.

- Warren Buffett

Commonality Broker has with the Doctor

Your broker is like a doctor who charges his patients on how often they change medicines, and he is paid more not for what will make you better but rather from the stuff that the street is promoting.

- Warren Buffett

Bet on the asset and not on its future price

When you get into buying something where you just betting on whether people will pay a little more for it next year but it doesn’t produce anything, there is nothing illegal about it. It is not illegal, it’s not immoral and probably it isn’t financial fattening either but you are betting on investor attitude or speculator attitude rather than betting on the asset itself.

- Warren Buffett

The crowd

The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don't have to swing at everything--you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you're a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, 'Swing, you bum!

- Warren Buffett

House: Dream vs Affordable

A house can be a nightmare if the buyer’s eyes are bigger than his wallet and if a lender – often protected by a government guarantee – facilitates his fantasy. Our country’s social goal should not be to put families into the house of their dreams, but rather to put them into a house they can afford.

- Warren Buffett

Real Estate: Investment?

All things considered, the third best investment I ever made was the purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks.

- Warren Buffett

Intrinsic value

The challenge, of course, is the calculation of intrinsic value. Present that task to Charlie and me separately, and you will get two different answers. Precision just isn't possible.

- Warren Buffett

The cycle repeats

It is natural to assume that industries which have fared worse than the average are "unfavorably situated" and therefore to be avoided. The converse would be assumed, of course, for those with superior records. But this conclusion may often prove quite erroneous. Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever. This is true not only of general business but of particular industries as well. Corrective forces are often set in motion which tend to restore profits where they have disappeared, or to reduce them where they are excessive in relation to capital.

- Warren Buffett

Stick with predictable

Stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable.

- Warren Buffett

Good is always not good

A good business is not always a good purchase - although it's a good place to look for one.

- Warren Buffett

Keep playing

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

- Warren Buffett

Economic forecasts

I don't read economic forecasts. I don't read the funny papers.

- Warren Buffett

Long term asset?

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 (at the height of 2008 crisis)

It doesn't change

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

- Warren Buffett

Inactivity also plays a part in successful investing

With short-term money returning less than 1 percent after-tax, sitting it out is no fun. But occasionally successful investing requires inactivity.

- Warren Buffett