Customer Reviews

Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Greatest Investor

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you are interested in reading about Buffett and his investment approach, this book is useless. This is a very short collection of quotes, most of which you will run into anyway.

If interested in Buffett as an investor, one good book is The Essays of Warren Buffett. If you want to save money even on this one, without missing out on the content, just download the letters to shareholders Buffett has written over the years and posted on Berkshire Hathaway's website, for free of course.

I'm a big fan of Warren Buffett already, but I have to say this is one of my favorite books of recent years. It's quite an easy read and very well written. Authored by someone who also appears to be a big fan of Warren Buffett. The book is well laid out, with sections on a number of topics. It imparts a variety of Mr. Buffett's business and investing wit & wisdom through quotes and interesting stories relating to both his personal and investing life. Not only may this book help you become a better investor, but it may also help you become a better person as well. Highly recommended, whether you invest in stocks or not.

This is the wit and wisdom of Warren Buffet, the "World's Greatest Investor." Not all of the quotes are from him but are from friends, family, and colleagues. As mentioned in the book, this is more along the lines of Will Rogers. It is not strictly aphorisms on investing.

Just seeing Buffett's name sparked my enthusiasm in the book. Thinking this book would have a lot of investing tips, I was disappointed. The first part of the book consists of sayings on life in general. As the book progresses, then some investing thoughts are covered. When they are covered, they are not easily converted into a personal strategy to make a quick profit.

This does not mean that it is without merit. The key idea I will take from this book is to invest in companies rather than stock. If your research shows that the company is solid, you should invest in that company. Another idea is to invest as if you were going to leave for 5-10 years and had no way to change the investment.

There is a repeat of at least one quote. "You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ." A rather encouraging thought about investing.

If you are looking for a guide to investing, then this is not your book. If you were looking for ideas to think about that would help shape long-term goals, then this would be more helpful. I would wait for the book by Warren Buffett.

She turns a great man into a cartoon character and refeeds us old quotes that she sold us years ago. Janet is a great writer but this is far from her best work. And the sad part of it is that she knows the man and could have given us some good personal insight. If you read the first edition don't bother with the second. And if you read the second don't expect to get much insight into Buffett's investment methods. Can't recommend this book, but I can recommend her books on Graham and Munger, which are both first class reads and worth the price.

Warren Buffett is just an inspiration. He is not only a great investor but also a great person. Unlike other billionaires who live in expansive mansions, Warren still lives in the same house in Omaha that he purchased for $32,000. Because he lives a simple life and is humble, the average person can identify with him and believes that it is possible to become like him. This book is full of Warren's quotes where readers can learn the values that he follows. The book is divided into six sections: about life, about friends, about family, about work, about running a business, and about investing. I highly recommend this book to anyone whether you are an investor or not.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

This book is a hodgepodge of information about a great man. There are lots of quotes and interesting facts about Buffett. If you already know him then there is little that is new here but it is still presented in an enjoyable way. The second half of the book is dedicated to his investing style with a lot of random stuff. For example, Lowe dumps material about Buffett's philosophies on charitable giving in this section.

Overall, good coffee table book or a nice gift for someone perhaps. However, if you are serious in wanting to learn about Warren Buffett (especially his investing style) then I would recommend reading his letters to shareholders which is posted for free in the Berkshire Hathaway website in his annual reports. These are extremely interesting and enjoyable to read even for non-investors. What makes Buffett a great man is not just his skills and talent at making money but his philosophies on various other topics.

I try to read everything on Warren Buffett and this book uncovers some new info that I haven't read. This book uncovers more about Buffett, the person, not just Buffett, the investor, even though the bulk of the book is on the latter. Most people like him because he is smart and he is rich but they don't know that he is also a great guy and a good person. He is a great change from the "Hey, it's only business" attitude as he would rather save a good company and lose some money than just fire everyone and sell it. He believes making money is important but building relationships with good people and good management is even more important since this is rare feat. He is not into material things as he still lives in his first house in his hometown driving the same car. Money to him is just a scoreboard. He has made the largest donation to charity in history and plans to give most of it away as opposed to leaving it as inheritance for his family since he believes that would be foodstamps for the rich. You learn a lot from this book about life, not just investing. My favorite part of the book is on his attitude. He is supremely confident and never has any doubt in anything he do. If you ever compare Berk with S&P 500, you will find they are two different graphs. This is testimony to his stay-true commitment to his investment strategy, a very important quality to have if you do decide to invest.

Janet has collected and organized Warren Buffet's quotes into categories such as family, friendship, investing (the largest, obviously). Having these quotes in one place brings out the consistency and simple life principles in Buffet's philosophy. Reflecting on how you agree / disagree with the quotes, why, and under which situations will help increase common sense. There are several suggestions that can be usefully applied. For example, I can benefit from researching competition more thoroughly when investing in a company. The four stars instead of five are because I didn't find a major "aha" that would enable a paradigm shift.

I thought this was a good book as far as understanding what is in the mind of Buffet. I do not follow him religiously like some so this book gave book a good insight on what type of human and investor he is. This is a Warren Buffet exam cram book. Warren is a very rear person. You will not see people like him everyday. Buy this book based on that premise alone. After reading I think you will agree that this man is special, not just for his investing knowledge but as a human being.

This book provides trivial context free quotes from the Master. The context can be provided if you read the full text. (You may find you disagree with it in context.) Anyway, the Berkshire homepage (WWW.BERKSHIREHATHAWAY.COM) has a full set of Berkshire letters to shareholders. Read these instead.