I’ve covered business for more than 20 years, writing articles for Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg, Money, Fast Company, Time, The New Yorker and The Economist. Along the way, I’ve interviewed countless billionaires, many legendary investors, and the CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies. But in all those years, no business figure has fascinated and obsessed me as much as Warren Buffett.

Fifty years after taking charge of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett reigns supreme as the greatest investor in history, with a personal fortune of $70 billion. Berkshire’s latest annual report says its market value has soared by 1,826,163 percent under his leadership—an astonishing feat that boggles the imagination.


Buffett and his brilliant partner Charlie Munger are central figures in The Great Minds of Investing, a new book that I’ve written and edited, which will be published on May 29. It features profiles of 33 famous investors, along with portraits by Michael O’Brien, who has traveled all around the world over the past five years to take stunning photographs of Buffett, Munger, and the other investors in this book. Many of the great investors I interviewed for the book spoke of Buffett with awe. For example, Mohnish Pabrai told me that discovering Buffett changed his life, inspiring him to embark on a 30-year “game” in which his goal is to turn $1 million into $1 billion by following what he calls Buffett’s “laws of investing.”

If you want to get fabulously rich, it clearly pays to study Buffett. But what’s extraordinary to me is that Buffett’s wisdom goes so far beyond business and investing. Here, then, are ten of my all-time favorite insights from Buffett on how to build a successful — and happy — life.

“Unconditional Love Is Huge In This World”

In his profile for The Great Minds of Investing, Buffett speaks candidly about the most important reason for his success: the love and support he received from his father, Howard Buffett, a U.S. Congressman whom he revered. “My dad believed in me,” Buffett explains. “What I basically got from my father is unconditional love. Unconditional love is huge in this world… Whatever I did, he was all for it. It didn’t matter how much money I made or anything like that. It was just, ‘Do your best in whatever you take on.’”

“I Don’t Work To Collect Money…”

For more quotes to live by, continue reading here…