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You Don't Need To Have Extraordinary Effort To Achieve Extraordinary Results. You Just Need To Do The Ordinary, Everyday Things Exceptionally Well.
-Warren Buffett
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You Don't Need To

Warren Buffett
...
You Don't Need To Have Extraordinary Effort To Achieve Extraordinary Results. You Just Need To Do The Ordinary, Everyday Things Exceptionally Well.

Understanding the Quote: "you don't need to have extraordinary effort to achieve extraordinary results. you..."

This quote by Warren Buffett reflects deeply on the theme of everyday things. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Everyday Things, Effort, Ordinary, 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 everyday things and effort. 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
Everyday Things
Effort
Ordinary
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Alternatives
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Investment
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Littles
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Effort
Ordinary
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Right Now
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Enemy
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Forgiving
Doe
Helping
Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?
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Lucky
Wealth
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Achieve
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People
Gum
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Important
Different
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Making A Difference
Treasury
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.
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Two
Energy
In Looking For People To Hire, Look For Three Qualities: Integrity, Intelligence And Energy. And If They Don't Have The First, The Other Two Will Kill You.
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Motivational
Education
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Pounds
Cures
Fund Consultants Like To Require Style Boxes Such As "long-short," "macro," "international Equities." At Berkshire Our Only Style Box Is "smart."
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Long
Style
I Have A House That I Bought 55 Years Ago. It's Warm In The Winter; It's Cool In The Summer. It Has Everything I Wanted, Plus It Has All Kinds Of Good Memories. Like My Kids, I Have Good Thoughts About That. I Can't Imagine Living Any Better.
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Memories
Kids
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Never Forget
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Intelligent
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Would Be
Rich
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Keynes
Figures
You're Dealing With A Lot Of Silly People In The Marketplace; It's Like A Great Big Casino And Everyone Else Is Boozing. If You Can Stick With Pepsi, You Should Be Ok.
Silly
Investing Money
People
The Most Dangerous Distractions Are The Ones You Love, But That Don’t Love You Back.
Love You
Distraction
Dangerous
Do Not Take Yearly Results Too Seriously. Instead, Focus On Four Or Five-year Averages.
Average
Years
Focus
Wide Diversification Is Only Required When Investors Do Not Understand What They Are Doing.
Success
Business
Intelligent
My Net Worth Is The Market Value Of Holdings Less The Tax Payable Upon Sale. The Liability Is Just As Real As The Asset Unless The Value Of The Asset Declines (ouch), The Asset Is Given Away (no Comment), Or I Die With It. The Latter Course Of Action Would Appear To At Least Border On A Pyrrhic Victory.
Real
Victory
Borders
We've Got A Wonderful Economic Formula In This Country.
Country
Wonderful
Economic
Banking Is Very Good Business If You Don't Do Anything Dumb.
Dumb
Banking
Good Business
Cash, Though, Is To A Business As Oxygen Is To An Individual: Never Thought About When It Is Present, The Only Thing In Mind When It Is Absent... When Bills Come Due, Only Cash Is Legal Tender. Don't Leave Home Without It.
Home
Oxygen
Mind
If I Got Any Good Ideas Out Of That Or I Think They're Good Ideas, I'll Be Glad To Contribute Them But The System Will Probably Overdo Some Other Things.
Thinking
Ideas
Glad
Our Investments Continue To Be Few In Number And Simple In Concept: The Truly Big Investment Idea Can Usually Be Explained In A Short Paragraph. We Like A Business With Enduring Competitive Advantages That Is Run By Able And Owner-oriented People. When These Attributes Exist, And When We Can Make Purchases At Sensible Prices, It Is Hard To Go Wrong (a Challenge We Periodically Manage To Overcome).
Running
Simple
Ideas
The Power Of Unconditional Love. I Mean, There Is No Power On Earth Like Unconditional Love.
Mean
Unconditional Love
Earth
One Of The Ironies Of The Stock Market Is The Emphasis On Activity. Brokers, Using Terms Such As 'marketability' And 'liquidity,' Sing The Praises Of Companies With High Share Turnover... But Investors Should Understand That What Is Good For The Croupier Is Not Good For The Customer. A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pick Pocket Of Enterprise.
Pockets
Investing
Irony
You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.
Baby
Smart
Investing Money
In My View, [the Trade Deficit] Will Create Political Turmoil At Some Point...pretty Soon, I Think There Will Be A Big Adjustment.
Thinking
Views
Political
In That, We Agreed With Andrew Carnegie, Who Said That Huge Fortunes That Flow In Large Part From Society Should In Large Part Be Returned To Society. In My Case, The Ability To Allocate Capital Would Have Had Little Utility Unless I Lived In A Rich, Populous Country In Which Enormous Quantities Of Marketable Securities Were Traded And Were Sometimes Ridiculously Mispriced. And Fortunately For Me, That Describes The U.s. In The Second Half Of The Last Century.
Country
Enormous Quantities
Society
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
In The End, Alchemy, Whether It Is Metallurgical Or Financial, Fails. A Base Business Can Not Be Transformed Into A Golden Business By Tricks Of Accounting Or Capital Structure. The Man Claiming To Be A Financial Alchemist May Become Rich. But Gullible Investors Rather Than Business Achievements Will Usually Be The Source Of His Wealth.
Men
Alchemist
Investing
In Earlier Years, A Lesser Effort Produced Literally Dozens Of Comparable Opportunities. It Is Difficult To Be Objective About The Causes For Such Diminution Of One's Own Productivity. Three Factors That Seem Apparent Are: (1) A Somewhat Changed Market Environment; (2) Our Increased Size; And (3) Substantially More Competition.
Opportunity
Years
Effort
If You Don't Know The Jewelry, Know The Jeweller
Risk
Jewelry
Management
We Try To Buy Businesses With Good-to-superb Underlying Economics Run By Honest And Able People And Buy Them At Sensible Prices. That's All I'm Trying To Do.
Running
People
Trying
I Make No Effort To Predict The Course Of General Business Or The Stock Market. Period. However, Currently There Are Practices Snowballing In The Security Markets And Business World Which, While Devoid Of Short Term Predictive Value, Bother Me As To Possible Long Term Consequences.
Practice
Long
Effort
For Some Reason, People Take Their Cues From Price Action Rather Than From Values. What Doesn't Work Is When You Start Doing Things That You Don't Understand Or Because They Worked Last Week For Somebody Else. The Dumbest Reason In The World To Buy A Stock Is Because It's Going Up.
People
Investing
World
Honesty Is A Very Expensive Gift, Don't Expect It From Cheap People.
Inspirational
Life
Honesty
Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.
Writing
Commitment
Checks
You Are Lucky In Life If You Have The Right Heroes. I Advise All Of You, To The Extent You Can, To Pick Out A Few Heroes
Hero
Lucky
Advise
... But The Important Thing Is That When You Do Find One Where You Really Do Know What You Are Doing, You Must Buy In Quantity.... Charlie And I Have Made A Dozen Or So Very Big Decisions Relative To Net Worth, Although Not As Big As They Should Have Been. And In Each Of Those, We've Known That We Were Almost Certain To Be Right Going In.
Should Have
Decision
Important
Your Premium Brand Had Better Be Delivering Something Special, Or It's Not Going To Get The Business.
Life
Success
Business
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.
Years
Investment
Minutes
If, When Making A Stock Investment, You're Not Considering Holding It At Least Ten Years, Don't Waste More Than Ten Minutes Considering It.
Years
Waste
Investment
I Would Say That An Rfc-like Thing Might Make Sense. I Probably Would Do It Myself. But I Don't Think Trying To Combine That With What's Going Through Now, I Think What Is Needed Now Is Liquidity.
Thinking
Trying
Might
You Don't Have To Be A Genius To Invest Well
Genius
Wells
You Have To Turn Over A Lot Of Rocks To Find Those Little Anomalies. You Have To Find The Companies That Are Off The Map - Way Off The Map.
Rocks
Anomalies
Maps
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.
Thinking
Years
Together
People Should Always Know Better.
People
Should
Knows
When People Tell Me They've Learned From Experience, I Tell Them The Trick Is To Learn From Other People's Experience.
Love
Marriage
People
There Is No Question We Have An Access Stock.
Access
When You Build A Bridge, You Insist That It Can Carry 30,000 Pounds, But You Only Drive 10,000-pound Trucks Across It. And That Same Principle Works In Investing.
Bridges
Principles
Investing
The Stockmarket Is A Semi-psychotic Creature Given To Extremes Of Elation And Despair.
Despair
Elation
Psychotic
I Think That Both Parties Should Declare The Debt Limit As A Political Weapon Of Mass Destruction Which Can't Be Used. I Mean, It Is Silly To Have A Country That Has 237 Years Building Up Its Reputation And Then Have People Threaten To Tear It Down Because They're Not Getting Some Other Matter.
Country
Silly
Party
Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.
Funny Inspirational
Business
War
Money To Some Extent Sometimes Let You Be In More Interesting Environments. But It Can't Change How Many People Love You Or How Healthy You Are.
Love You
People
Interesting
Of One Thing Be Certain: If A Ceo Is Enthused About A Particularly Foolish Acquisition, Both His Internal Staff And His Outside Advisors Will Come Up With Whatever Projections Are Needed To Justify His Stance. Only In Fairy Tales Are Emperors Told That They Are Naked.
Naked
Acquisition
Fairy Tale
Larger Sums May Be An Advantage At Some Cases And A Disadvantage At Others.
May
Advantage
Cases
Never Count On Making A Good Sale. Have The Purchase Price Be So Attractive That Even A Mediocre Sale Gives Good Results.
Giving
Investing
Buffets
Do What You Would Do For Free, Having Passion For What You Do Is The Most Important Thing.
Passion
Important
Passion For What You Do
That Would Be Nice If [people] Stuck [treasury Bills] All Under A Mattress, But They Got To Buy Something With Them. Sometimes They Buy A Treasury Note, Sometimes They Set Up Sovereign Wealth Funds. They Can Do All Kinds Of Things. They Can Buy Our Companies Here. As Long As We Consume More Than We Produce, And We Trade Away Little Pieces Of The Country Daily, They're Going To Own Something. Now, They Can't Run From American Assets. I Mean Every Day The Rest Of The World Is Going To Have About Two Billion More Of American Assets Than We Have, As Long As They Sell Us These Goods.
Running
Country
Nice
The American Economy Is Going To Do Fine. But It Won't Do Fine Every Year And Every Week And Every Month. I Mean, If You Don't Believe That, Forget About Buying Stocks Anyway... It's A Positive-sum Game, Long Term. And The Only Way An Investor Can Get Killed Is By High Fees Or By Trying To Outsmart The Market.
Believe
Mean
Years
Other Guys Read Playboy. I Read Annual Reports.
Guy
Annual Reports
Playboy
Aig Would Be Doing Fine Today. It Was One Of The Ten Largest Companies In The United States In Terms Of Market Value, Over 200 Billion, The Most Respected Insurer And Everything In The World.
World
Today
United States
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.
Believe
Fall
Past
In A Difficult Business, No Sooner Is One Problem Solved Than Another Surfaces - Never Is There Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen.
Kitchen
Cockroaches
Problem
... Not Doing What We Love In The Name Of Greed Is Very Poor Management Of Our Lives.
Life
Investment Success
Names
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.
Keys
Investing
Durability
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