The Wisdom of Warren Buffet

 By Bruce Shawkey

I've long admired Warren Buffet, even though I've never owned stock in Berkshire Hathaway. I like that he is a down-to-earth individual who lives in a modest house in Omaha, Neb., and drives a 10-year old Cadillac. Here's some of his more witty and humorous quotes gathered by Inc. magazine. Like Mark Twain and Will Rogers, I doubt all of these quotes are accurate or were ever spoken by Buffet, but they are humorous and witty nonetheless.

"I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

Assessing Harley-Davidson as a company: “I like a business where customers tattoo their name on their chest.”

On the acquisition of wisdom: “Any attempts at autobiography before the age of 80 seem pretty self-involved to me. There are a lot of smart middle-aged people, but not many wise ones.”

On conflicts of interest: “You don’t ever ask a barber whether you need a haircut.”

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

“Never forget that 2 plus 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.”

“You don’t want to be like the man who, at his funeral, the minister said, now is the time for somebody to say something nice about the deceased. … Finally, one man came up: ‘Well, his brother was worse.'”

On confidence and knowing your abilities and limitations: “I can do anything I want, basically, as long as it doesn’t involve athletic ability.”

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

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

"If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.”

"I know many people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them.

“That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life… the only way to get love is to be lovable…. The more you give love away, the more you get.”

"I love every day. I mean, I tap dance in here and work with nothing but people I like….”