• 'The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.'
• 'Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.'
• 'Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.'
• 'We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.'
• 'Our favourite holding period is forever.'
• 'If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.'
• 'Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, 'Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.''
• 'Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.'
• 'You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.'
• 'We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own assets.'
• 'Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable.'
Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates (L) and his wife Melinda Gates (C) listen as US investment guru Warren Buffett addresses a press conference in New York after he pledged over $30 billion in charity to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Photograph: Nicholas Roberts/AFP/Getty Images
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