巴菲特经典名言英文版
“What counts for most people in investing is not how much they know, but rather how realistically they define what they don't know. An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.”
就投资而言，人们应该注意的，不是他到底知道多少，而是应该注意自己到底有多少是不知道的，投资人不需要花太多时间去做对的事，只要他能够尽量避免去犯重大的错误。
――1992 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
“Obviously, every investor will make mistakes. But by confining himself to a relatively few，easy-to-understand cases, a reasonably intelligent, informed and diligent person can judge investment risks with a useful degree of accuracy.”
当然每个投资人都会犯错，但只要将自己集中在相对少数，容易了解的投资个案上，一个理性、知性与耐性兼具的投资人一定能够将投资风险限定在可接受的范围之内。
――1993 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
“When returns on capital are ordinary, an earn- more- by-putting-up-more record is no great managerial achievement. You can get the same result personally while operating from your rocking chair. just quadruple the capital you commit to a savings account and you will quadruple your earnings. You would hardly expect hosannas for that particular accomplishment. Yet,
retirement announcements regularly sing the praises of CEOs who have, say, quadrupled earnings of their widget company during their reign - with no one examining whether this gain was attributable simply to many years of retained earnings and the workings of compound interest.”
当资本报酬率平平，这种大堆头式的赚钱方式跟本没什么了不起，你坐在摇椅上也能轻松达到这样的成绩，好比只要把你存在银行户头里的钱，一样可以赚到加倍的利息，没有人会对这样的成果报以掌声，但通常我们在某位资深主管的退休仪式上歌颂他在任内将公司的盈余数字提高数倍，却一点也不会去看看这些事实上是因为公司每年所累积盈余与复利所产生的效果。
――1985 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
“We have tried occasionally to buy toads at bargain prices with results that have been chronicled in past reports. Clearly our kisses fell flat. We have done well with a couple of princes - but they were princes when purchased. At least our kisses didn't turn them into toads. And, finally, we have occasionally been
quite successful in purchasing fractional interests in easily-identifiable princes at toad-like prices.”
我们曾用划算的价钱买下不少蟾蜍，过去的报告多已提及，很明显的我们的吻表现平平，我们有遇到几个王子级的公司，但是早在我们买下时他们就已是王子了，而至少我们的吻没让他们变回蟾蜍，而最后我们偶尔也曾成功地以蟾蜍般的价格买到部份王子级公司的部份股权。
――1981 Chairman's Letters to Shareholders
“First, many in Wall Street - a community in which quality control is not prized - will sell investors anything they will buy.”
第一课，不论是什么东西，只要有人要买，华尔街那帮人都会想办法弄来卖给你。
――2000 Letter to Shareholders
“The most common cause of low prices is pessimism-some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.”
股价不振最主要的原因是悲观的情绪，有时是全面性的，有时则仅限于部份产业或是公司，我们很期望能够在这种环境下做生意，不是因为我们天生喜欢悲观，而是如此可以得到便宜的价格买进更多好的公司，乐观是理性投资人最大的敌人。 ――1990 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
“Ben’s Mr. Market allegory may seem out-of-date in today's investment world, in which most professionals and academicians talk of efficient markets,
dynamic hedging and betas. Their interest in such matters is understandable, since techniques shrouded in mystery clearly have value to the purveyor of investment advice. After all, what witch doctor has ever achieved fame and fortune by simply advising 'Take two aspirins'?”
葛拉汉的市场先生理论在现今的投资世界内或许显得有些过时，尤其是在那些大谈市场效率理论、动态避险与beta值的专家学者眼中更是如此，他们会对那些深奥的课题感到兴趣是可以理解的，因为这对于渴望投资建议的追求者来说，是相当具吸引力的，就像是没有一位名医可以单靠「吃两颗阿斯匹宁」这类简单有效的建议成名致富的。
――1987 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
“John Maynard Keynes, whose brilliance as a practicing investor matched his brilliance in thought, wrote a letter to a business associate, F. C. Scott, on August 15, 1934 that says it all: As time goes on，I get more and more
convinced that the right method in investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the
management of which one thoroughly believes. It is a mistake to think that one limits one's risk by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence… One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or
three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.”
著名经济学家凯因斯，他的投资绩效跟他的理论思想一样杰出，在19xx年8月15日他曾经写了一封信给生意伙伴Scott上面写到，随着时光的流逝，我越来越相信正确的投资方式是将大部分的资金投入在自己认为了解且相信的事业之上，而不是将资金分散到自己不懂且没有特别信心的一大堆公司，每个人的知识与经验一定有其限度，就我本身而言，我很难同时有两三家以上的公司可以让我感到完全的放心。
――1991 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
“I would rather be certain of a good result than hopeful of a great one.”
但与其两鸟在林，还不如一鸟在手。
――1996 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
“The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities - that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future - will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy
participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”
投资与投机之间永远是一线之隔，尤其是当所有市场的参与者都沉浸在欢愉的气氛当中时更是如此，再也没有比大笔不劳而获的金钱更让人失去理性，在经历过这类经验之后，再正常的人也会像参加舞会的灰姑娘一样被冲昏了头，他们明知在舞会中多待一会-也就是继续将大笔的资金投入到投机的活动之上，南瓜马车与老鼠驾驶现出原形的机率就越高，但他们还是舍不得错过这场盛大舞会的任何一分钟，所有人都打算继续待到最后一刻才离开，但问题是这场舞会中的时钟根本就没有指针!
“Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.”
“When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a poor reputation for fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that stays intact.”
“I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”
――Warren Buffett lecturing to a group of students at Columbia U
“There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do.”
――Warren Buffett in a Morningstar Interview
“If you're an investor, you're looking on what the asset is going to do, if you're a speculator, you're commonly focusing on what the price of the object is going to do, and that's not our game.”
――1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
“It is our job to help our clients be fearful when others are greedy, and look at opportunities when others are fearful.”
“If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety...”
――1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
“You pay a high price for a cheery consensus.” “If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety...”
――1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
“The only way to be loved is to be loveable, which really irritates me.” ―― Warren Buffett speaking at the City Club in Seattle (July 21, 2001)
“When they open that envelope, the first instruction is to take my pulse again.”
――2001 Annual Meeting after mentioning that the instructions of his succession are sealed in an envelope at headquarters
“Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of
investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically.
Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart - and not too smart at that - only a very few times. Indeed, we'll now settle for one good idea a year.”
“The fact that people will be full of greed, fear or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.”
――Warren Buffett, Financial Review, 1985
“I am out of step with present conditions. When the game is no longer played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, and so on. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand ( although I find it difficult to apply ) even though it may mean foregoing large, and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don't fully understand, have not practiced successfully, and which possibly could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital.”
――Warren Buffett in a letter to his partners in the stock market frenzy of 1969.
“We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.”
“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.”
――July 1999 at Herb Allen's Sun Valley, Idaho Retreat
“The most common cause of low prices is pessimism-some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.”
I don't read economic forecasts. I don't read the funny papers.
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!'
――1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.
――BusinessWeek Interview June 25 1999
Our future rates of gain will fall far short of those achieved in the past. Berkshire's capital base is now simply too large to allow us to earn truly outsized returns. If you believe otherwise, you should consider a career in sales but avoid one in mathematics (bearing in mind that there are really only three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't).
我们未来的成长率将远不及过去所创造的水准，Berkshire现在的规模实在是大到我们很难再做出任何重大的突破，若是你不这样认为，你应该去从事业务员的工作，而不是去教数学(请永远记住，世界上只有三种人，一种会算术，另一种不会算术)。
――1998 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don't understand, but that doesn't cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that's what the individual investor should do.
――Warren Buffett in a Morningstar Interview
“Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.”
――Berkshire Hathaway 1998 Annual Meeting
“We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.”
――Berkshire Hathaway 1998 Annual Meeting
Time is the enemy of the poor business and the friend of the great business. If you have a business that's earning 20%-25% on equity, time is your friend. But time is your enemy if your money is in a low return business.
――1998 Berkshire Annual Meeting
If you expect to be a net saver during the next 5 years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall.This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.
假设你预估未来五年内可以存一笔钱，那么你希望这期间的股票市场是涨还是跌? 这时许多投资人对于这个问题的答案就可能是错的，虽然他们在未来的期间内会陆续买进股票，不过当股价涨时他们会感到高兴，股价跌时反而觉得沮丧，这种
感觉不等于是当你去买汉堡吃时，看到汉堡涨价却欣喜若狂，这样的反应实在是没有什么道理，只有在短期间准备卖股票的人才应该感到高兴，准备买股票的人应该期待的是股价的下滑。
――1997 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
“The strategy (of portfolio concentration ) we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well
decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.”
我们采取的这种策略排除了依照普通分散风险的教条，许多学者便会言之凿凿说我们这种策略比起一般传统的投资风险要高的许多，这点我们不敢苟同，我们相信集中持股的做法同样可以大幅降低风险，只要投资人在买进股份之前，能够加强本身对于企业的认知以及对于竞争能力熟悉的程度，在这里我们将风险定义，与一般字典里的一样，系指损失或受伤的可能性。
――1993 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
“In 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds
available in equities - at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.”
“We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as 'the possibility of loss or injury.'”
我们相信集中持股的做法同样可以大幅降低风险，只要投资人在买进股份之前，能够加强本身对于企业的认知以及对于竞争能力熟悉的程度，在这里我们将风险定义，与一般字典里的一样，系指损失或受伤的可能性。
――1993 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
“We think diversification, as practiced generally, makes very little sense for anyone who knows what they're doing. Diversification serves as protection against ignorance. If you want to make sure that nothing bad happens to you relative to the market, you should own everything. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a perfectly sound approach for somebody who doesn't know how to analyze businesses.
“But if you know how to value businesses,it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful
businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into 30 or 35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness.”
――1996 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
“The most important thing in terms of your circle of competence is not how large the area of it is, but how well you've defined the perimeter. If you know where the edges are, you're way better off than somebody that's got one that's five times as large but they get very fu about the edges.”
――“Warren Buffett Talks Business,” The University of North Carolina, Center for Public Television, Chapel Hill, 1995
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” “Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an
easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards - so when you see one that qualifies, you should buy a meaningful amount of stock. You must also resist the temptation to stray from your guidelines: If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.”
――1996 Shareholders Letter
“Our policy is to concentrate holdings. We try to avoid buying a little of this or that when we are only lukewarm about the business or its price. When we are convinced as to attractiveness, we believe in buying worthwhile amounts.”
我们的政策是集中持股(Concentrate Holdings)。当我们决定了后便买进「一大笔」，而非这也买一点、那也买点，但事后却漠不关心。
――1978 Letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders
“I put a heavy weight on certainty. If you do that, the whole idea of a risk factor doesn't make sense to me. Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.” ――“Buffett Talks Strategy with Students”, Omaha World-Herald 1994