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It Takes 150 Years To Build An Investment Bank And Only Five Minutes To Convince You To Sell Me Preferred Stock In It At A 10% Interest Rate.
-Warren Buffett
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It Takes 150 Years

Warren Buffett
...
It Takes 150 Years To Build An Investment Bank And Only Five Minutes To Convince You To Sell Me Preferred Stock In It At A 10% Interest Rate.

Understanding the Quote: "it takes 150 years to build an investment bank and only five..."

This quote by Warren Buffett reflects deeply on the theme of years. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Years, Investment, Minutes, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Warren Buffett interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is celebrated for insightful thoughts on years and investment. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Years
Investment
Minutes
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If You Don't Feel Comfortable Owning Something For 10 Years, Then Don't Own It For 10 Minutes.
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You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.
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Investing Money
I'll Take The Deal, Whatever You Want To Do.
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Deals
The Idea That You Try To Time Purchases Based On What You Think Business Is Going To Do In The Next Year Or Two, I Think That's The Greatest Mistake That Investors Make Because It's Always Uncertain. People Say It's A Time Of Uncertainty. It Was Uncertain On September 10th, 2001, People Just Didn't Know It. It's Uncertain Every Single Day. So Take Uncertainty As Part Of Being Involved In Investment At All. But Uncertainty Can Be Your Friend. I Mean, When People Are Scared, They Pay Less For Things. We Try To Price. We Don't Try To Time At All.
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Foolish
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Generosity
Buffets
Unless Your Answers Are Clearly Better, Copy The Answers Of Your Betters.
Answers
Copies
If We Have A Strength, It Is In Recognizing When We Are Operating Well Within Our Circle Of Competence And When We Are Approaching The Perimeter.
Circles
Competence
Wells
Beware [of] The Investment Activity That Produces Applause; The Great Moves Are Usually Greeted By Yawns.
Moving
Investment
Applause
You Don't Need To Have Extraordinary Effort To Achieve Extraordinary Results. You Just Need To Do The Ordinary, Everyday Things Exceptionally Well.
Everyday Things
Effort
Ordinary
You Could Be Somewhere Where The Mail Was Delayed Three Weeks And Do Just Fine Investing.
Three
Investing
Mail
When You Combine Ignorance And Leverage, You Get Some Pretty Interesting Results.
Ignorance
Investing Money
Interesting
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.
Circles
Important
Term
When Forced To Choose, I Will Not Trade Even A Night's Sleep For The Chance Of Extra Profits.
Life
Sleep
Night
In Other Words, The Percentage Change In Book Value In Any Given Year Is Likely To Be Reasonably Close To That Year's Change In Intrinsic Value.
Book
Years
Percentages
To Invest Successfully, You Need Not Understand Beta, Efficient Markets, Modern Portfolio Theory, Option Pricing Or Emerging Markets. You May, In Fact, Be Better Off Knowing Nothing Of These. That, Of Course, Is Not The Prevailing View At Most Business Schools, Whose Finance Curriculum Tends To Be Dominated By Such Subjects. In Our View, Though, Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses - How To Value A Business, And How To Think About Market Prices.
Business
School
Thinking
I Think Once You Start Putting Phony Figures Into Financial Statements, You Get In A Lot Of Trouble. And We've Seen So Much Of That In The Last 20 Years.
Thinking
Years
Lasts
You Should Be Unconcerned About Short-term Price Action When You Own The Securities Directly, Just As You Were Unconcerned When You Owned Them Indirectly Through Bpl. I Think About Them As Businesses, Not "stocks", And If The Business Does All Right Over The Long Term, So Will The Stock.
Thinking
Long
Doe
The Most Common Cause Of Low Prices Is Pessimism - Sometimes Pervasive, Sometimes 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.
Business
Insightful
Causes
If You Hit A Hole In One Every Hole, You Wouldn’t Play Golf For Very Long.
Golf
Play
Long
You Could Take All The Gold That's Ever Been Mined, And It Would Fill A Cube 67 Feet In Each Direction. For What That's Worth At Current Gold Prices, You Could Buy All -- Not Some -- All Of The Farmland In The United States. Plus, You Could Buy 10 Exxon Mobils, Plus Have $1 Trillion Of Walking-around Money. Or You Could Have A Big Cube Of Metal. Which Would You Take? Which Is Going To Produce More Value?
Feet
Gold
Cubes
The Value Of Market Esoterica To The Consumer Of Investment Advice Is A Different Story. In My Opinion, Investment Success Will Not Be Produced By Arcane Formulae, Computer Programs Or Signals Flashed By The Price Behavior Of Stocks And Markets. Rather An Investor Will Succeed By Coupling Good Business Judgment With An Ability To Insulate His Thoughts And Behavior From The Super-contagious Emotions That Swirl About The Marketplace.
Investment Success
Advice
Succeed
The Fundamental Basis Of Above-average Performance In The Long Run Is Sustainable Competitive Advantage.
Running
Average
Long
We've Got More Productive Capacity Now Than We Ever Have.
Capacity
Productive
I Don't Need 15 Houses. Owning Real Estate Doesn't Mean Much To Me. I Don't Like To Think About Things Like That. I Don't Need 12 Boats, Or Even The World's Largest Boat With A Crew Of 80. I'd Have To Take Care Of Them, To Worry About Them. I Get A Lot More Fun Out Of Life Without All The Bells And Whistles.
Fun
Real
Mean
Investors Should Remember That Their Scorecard Is Not Computed Using Olympic-diving Methods: Degree-of-difficulty Doesn't Count. If You Are Right About A Business Whose Value Is Largely Dependent On A Single Key Factor That Is Both Easy To Understand And Enduring, The Payoff Is The Same As If You Had Correctly Analyzed An Investment Alternative Characterized By Many Constantly Shifting And Complex Variables.
Keys
Degrees
Alternatives
We Have To Live With The Rest Of The World. And It's A Mistake, In My View. Trade Has Generally Developed In This Country. We Actually Export 12 Or 13 Percent Of Our Gdp. It Was Only 5 Percent In 1970. But It Benefits Us. It Benefits The Rest Of The World. It Doesn't Benefit The Steelworker Maybe In Ohio. And That's The Problem That Has To Be Addressed, Because When You Have Something That's Good For Society, But Terribly Harmful For Given Individuals, We Have Got To Make Sure Those Individuals Are Taken Care Of.
Country
Mistake
Taken
If You Want Your Business To Survive For 100 Years, You've Got To Make It Through Every Single Day For 100 Years. It's Not Enough To Do It 99.9% Of The Time.
Business
Years
Want
The Worst Sort Of Business Is One That Grows Rapidly, Requires Significant Capital To Engender The Growth, And Then Earns Little Or No Money. Think Airlines. Here A Durable Competitive Advantage Has Proven Elusive Ever Since The Days Of The Wright Brothers. Indeed, If A Farsighted Capitalist Had Been Present At Kitty Hawk, He Would Have Done His Successors A Huge Favor By Shooting Orville Down.
Brother
Thinking
Growth
Focus On Your Customers And Lead Your People As Though Their Lives Depend On Your Success.
People
Focus
Investing
Look For 3 Things In A Person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If They Don't Have The Last One, Don't Even Bother With The First Two.
Integrity
Two
Energy
With Housing It's Something Even More Dramatic Than That, Because Most People Aspire To Own Their Own Home.if You Really Think That Houses Prices Are Going To Go Up Next Year And The Year After, You Feel If I Don't Buy It This Year, I'm Going To Have To Buy It Next Year.that's Not True Of An Internet Stock. But It's True Of A Home.
Home
Thinking
Years
We Need A Tax System That Essentially Takes Very Good Care Of The People Who Just Really Aren't As Well Adapted To The Market System But Are Nevertheless Doing Useful Things In The Society.
People
Needs
Care
Mr. Market Is Kind Of A Drunken Psycho. Some Days He Gets Very Enthused, Some Days He Gets Very Depressed. And When He Get Really Enthused You Sell To Him, And If He Gets Depressed, You Buy From Him. There's No Moral Taint Attached To That.
Moral
Psycho
Kind
Buy Into A Company Because You Want To Own It, Not Because You Want The Stock To Go Up.
Investing Money
Want
Buffets
All But A Few Of The Organizations Do Not Specifically Promise To Deliver Superior Investment Performance Although It Is Perhaps Not Unreasonable For The Public To Draw Such An Inference From Their Advertised Emphasis On Professional Management.
Organization
Promise
Management
I Tell College Students, When You Get To Be My Age You Will Be Successful If The People Who You Hope To Have Love You, Do Love You.
Love You
Successful
College
The Plan Itself Is Opportunism. There Is No Plan Before That.
Plans
Opportunism
Opportunities Come Infrequently. When It Rains Gold, Put Out The Bucket, Not The Thimble.
Rain
Opportunity
Gold
I've Learned Mainly By Reading Myself. So I Don't Think I Have Any Original Ideas. Certainly, I Talk About Reading Graham. I've Read Phil Fisher. So I've Gotten A Lot Of My Ideas From Reading. You Can Learn A Lot From Other People. In Fact, I Think If You Learn Basically From Other People, You Don't Have To Get Too Many New Ideas On Your Own. You Can Just Apply The Best Of What You See.
Reading
Thinking
Ideas
I Bought My First Stock In 1942, In The Summer Of '42. I Was 11 Years Old. And So 75 Years Have Gone By. And I Have Never Known What The Market's Going To Do The Next Day. And That's Not My Game. My Game Is To Decide Whether I'm In The Right Economy, Which America's Definitely Been Ever Since That Time. The Dow Has Gone From 100 To 21,000 During That Time. And No Matter What The Headlines Say, Or Terrible Things Are Happening - We Were Losing The War In The Pacific When I First Bought Stocks.
Summer
War
Losing
But, Surprise - None Of These Blockbuster Events Made The Slightest Dent In Ben Graham's Investment Principles. Nor Did They Render Unsound The Negotiated Purchases Of Fine Businesses At Sensible Prices. Imagine The Cost To Us, Then, If We Had Let A Fear Of Unknowns Cause Us To Defer Or Alter The Deployment Of Capital. Indeed, We Have Usually Made Our Best Purchases When Apprehensions About Some Macro Event Were At A Peak. Fear Is The Foe Of The Faddist, But The Friend Of The Fundamentalist.
Deployment
Principles
Events
Buy Stocks Like You Buy Your Groceries, Not Like You Buy Your Perfume.
Like You
Groceries
Perfume
You Do Things When The Opportunities Come Along. I've Had Periods In My Life When I've Had A Bundle Of Ideas Come Along, And I've Had Long Dry Spells. If I Get An Idea Next Week, I'll Do Something. If Not, I Won't Do A Damn Thing.
War
Opportunity
Investing Money
Generally, We Have Translated Greater Output In The Few Hours Of Work Per Week Over The Last Century. And That's A Good Trend Of The Future. But We Do Have To Have A System That, As Output Of Goods And Services Keeps Increasing Per Capita, That It Takes Care Of The People Who Are Willing To Work And Really Are Not Getting By Very Well With A Family On A 40-hour Week.
People
Care
Week
A Newspaper That Reduces Its Coverage Of The News Important To Its Community Is Certain To Reduce Its Readership As Well
Community
Important
News
People Went Crazy With Tulip Bulbs. They Went Crazy With The South Sea Bubble, They Went Crazy Internet Stocks, They Went Crazy With The Uranium Stocks Back When I Was First Getting Started.
Crazy
Sea
People
Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses - How To Value A Business And How To Think About Market Prices
Thinking
Two
Needs
We Really Can Say No In 10 Seconds Or So To 90%+ Of All The Things That Come Along Simply Because We Have These Filters.
Filters
Investing
Seconds
Well, I Think The Biggest Mistake Is Not Learning The Habits Of Saving Properly Early. Because Saving Is A Habit. And Then, Trying To Get Rich Quick. It's Pretty Easy To Get Well-to-do Slowly. But It's Not Easy To Get Rich Quick.
Get Well
Mistake
Thinking
My Idea Of A Group Decision Is To Look In The Mirror.
Mirrors
Ideas
Decision
Well, It May Be All Right In Practice, But It Will Never Work In Theory
Practice
May
Theory
The Good Thing Is, We Have Household Formation In This Country.
Country
Good Things
Household
You Need A Lot Of Curiosity For A Long, Long Time.
Long
Curiosity
Needs
Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.
Life
Lying
Generosity
The Value Of A Business Is The Cash It's Going To Produce In The Future.
Cash
Produce
Values
Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.
Investing Money
Buffets
Rationality
I Mean, Hank Paulson Is In There [ Treasury] At The Wrong Time, Probably Shouldn't Have Taken The Job. He's A Friend Of Mine. But He Knows Markets, He Knows Corporations' Work, He Knows Money, And He's Got The Interests Of The Country At Heart.
Country
Jobs
Taken
I Lose Confidence In Other People, All Kinds Of Institutions.
People
Kind
Institutions
Investing In Yourself Is The Best Thing You Can Do. If You've Got Talents, No One Can Take Them From You.
Investing
Talent
Best Things
I've Read About All The Sales Today. If You're An Auto Dealer, You're Feeling It. If You're A Furniture Retailer Like We Are, You're Feeling It. If You're A Jewelry Retailer, You're Feeling It. I Know Some Of These Businesses Because We're In Them. Yeah, It's Being Felt, But It Will Be Felt Big Time More If We Don't Do Something About It, What's Going On.
Feelings
Today
Furniture
Our Leaders Have Asked For “shared Sacrifice.” But When They Did The Asking, They Spared Me. I Checked With My Mega-rich Friends To Learn What Pain They Were Expecting. They, Too, Were Left Untouched.
Pain
Sacrifice
Leader
Never Invest In A Business You Don't Understand.
The Most Important Quality For An Investor Is Temperament, Not Intellect. You Need A Temperament That Neither Derives Great Pleasure From Being With The Crowd Or Against The Crowd.
Important
Quality
Needs
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