20 Best Warren Buffett Quotes on Success

Here are billionaire Warren Buffett's greatest quotes and lessons for succeeding in life.

Success isn't just about money

“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.”

“Basically, when you get to my age, you'll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.”

“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.

Try to avoid liquor and borrowing

“I've seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage — leverage being borrowed money. You really don't need leverage in this world much. If you're smart, you're going to make a lot of money without borrowing.

You don't have to be extraordinary

“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.”

Learn to say “no”

“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”

Focus on the process and improvement

“Games are won by players who focus on the playing field –- not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard.”

Be confident

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute. ”

Find a good mentor

“I had a great teacher in life in my father. But I had another great teacher in terms of profession in terms of Ben Graham. I was lucky enough to get the right foundation very early on. And then basically I didn’t listen to anybody else. I just look in the mirror every morning and the mirror always agrees with me. And I go out and do what I believe I should be doing. And I’m not influenced by what other people think.”

“The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.”

Read and think

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business.”

Help those who aren't as lucky

“If you’re in the luckiest 1% of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99%.”

Your reputation is priceless

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.”

Think ahead and plan for the future

“What the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.”

Enjoy the process, not just end results

“We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.”

Do what you love

“There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?”

“Never give up searching for the job that you are passionate about.”

Learn from yours and others' mistakes

“The best thing is to learn from other guy’s mistakes. [General George S.] Patton used to say, “It’s an honor to die for your country; make sure the other guy gets the honor.” There are a lot of mistakes that I’ve repeated. The biggest one, the biggest category over time, is being reluctant to pay up a little for a business that I knew was really outstanding.”

You learn more from failures

“People succeed in life countless different ways but failures group around a few key themes. As such, you learn more from people's failures than people's successes.”

Learn how to invest like Warren Buffett:

Warren Buffett’s 8 Investing Rules for Getting Rich