Warren Buffett Intelligent Quotations

At age 19, I read a book [The Intelligent Investor] and what I'm doing today, at age 76, is running things through the same thought process I learned from the book I read at 19.

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.

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.

Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior.

More investment sins are probably committed by otherwise quite intelligent people because of "tax considerations" than from any other cause. One of my friends-a noted West Coast philosopher-maintains that a majority of life's errors are caused by forgetting what one is really trying to do. This is certainly the case when an emotionally supercharged element like taxes enters the picture (I have another friend-a noted East Coast philosopher who says it isn't the lack of representation he minds-it's the taxation).

Truly conservative actions arise from intelligent hypotheses, correct facts and sound reasoning.

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

If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.