Warren Buffett’s most insightful investing quotes as he celebrates retirement

Warren Buffett isn’t just a legendary investor — he’s a great speaker and writer, too. And while he has yet to channel his way with words into a tell-all book about investing, countless eloquent nuggets of wisdom can be found in his speeches and annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Over the course of his 60-year tenure at Berkshire, many of Buffett’s more memorable adages have become guideposts for newer value investors hoping to replicate his success as a stock picker.

Now that the famed CEO is stepping down from the company he built, we’ve collected some of his most valuable insights here to celebrate his legacy as the common-sense king of value investing.

This first batch of quotes comprises some of Buffett’s shorter financial proverbs. Taken together, they make a great pocket-sized guide to the market, summing up Buffett’s simple but highly effective investment style in fewer than 90 words.

• “Invest in companies you believe in.”

• “Our favorite holding period is forever.”

• “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

• “Never invest in a business you cannot understand.”

• “Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.”

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

• “The best chance to deploy capital is when things are going down.”

• “The three most important words in investing are ‘margin of safety.’”

• “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”

Buffett is well-known for buying stock in everyday companies whose products he uses himself, like Coca-Cola, Heinz, and American Express. He researches companies extensively, identifies those with incredibly solid long-term prospects, buys their stock, and holds it for a long time.

In this next batch of Buffett quotes, Benjamin Graham’s value-investing protégé discusses the market and his financial best practices in even more depth.

• “You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence.”

• “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.”

• “I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”

• “Our advantage, rather, was attitude: we had learned from Ben Graham that the key to successful investing was the purchase of shares in good businesses when market prices were at a large discount from underlying business values.”

• “The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.”

• “Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behaviour is vital to long-term investment success.”

• “Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.”

• “Buy a stock the way you would buy a house. Understand and like it such that you’d be content to own it in the absence of any market.”

• “Among the various propositions offered to you, if you invested in a very low-cost index fund — where you don’t put the money in at one time, but average in over 10 years — you’ll do better than 90% of people who start investing at the same time.”

• “Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages.”

• “Investors should be sceptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the models. Beware of geeks bearing formulas.”

Buffett is, first and foremost, an excellent investor, but despite the millions of dollars riding on his decisions, he’s always known better than to take the market (or himself) too seriously. This collection includes some of Buffett’s more irreverent axioms, starting with perhaps his most famous.

• “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.”

• “Remember that the stock market is a manic depressive.”

• “A good business is not always a good purchase — although it’s a good place to look for one.”

• “You can always tell someone to go to hell tomorrow. … You haven’t missed the opportunity.”

• “The trick is, when there is nothing to do, do nothing.”

• “Calling someone who trades actively in the market an investor “is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.”

• “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.”

• “What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.”

• “It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

• “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

• “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

• “A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

• “You don’t ever ask a barber whether you need a haircut.”

• “I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

• “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it.”

• “The business schools reward difficult complex behaviour more than simple behaviour, but simple behaviour is more effective.”

• “I can do anything I want, basically, as long as it doesn’t involve athletic ability.”

• “It’s much easier to stay out of trouble now than to get out of trouble later.”

• “I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out.”

• “I’ll bring my tax returns; you bring yours. I’ll meet you anytime, anywhere.”

• I tell students to go work for an organization you admire or an individual you admire, which usually means that most MBAs I meet become self-employed.”

• “If you have more than 120 or 130 IQ points, you can afford to give the rest away. You don’t need extraordinary intelligence to succeed as an investor.”

• “Never forget that 2 + 2 will always equal 4. And when someone tells you how old-fashioned that math is, zip up your wallet, take a vacation, and come back in a few years to buy stocks at cheap prices.”

• “At midnight, everything is going to turn to pumpkins and mice … You think why the hell should I leave at quarter of 12? I’ll leave at two minutes to 12. But the trouble is, there are no clocks on the wall. And everybody thinks they’re going to leave at two minutes to 12.”

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Oct 21, 2025, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.