Warren Buffett’s Most Famous Quote Is So Simple An 11-Year-Old Can Get It

Warren Buffett’s Most Famous Quote Is So Simple An 11-Year-Old Can Get It

A famous Warren Buffett quote is having a resurgence as investors debate whether the stock market is overvalued and approaching a ‘bubble’ phase.

It’s been 40 years since Buffett wrote the now famous line in this letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, but it captures the psychology of the market so perfectly—and so memorably—that it’s easy to repeat.

Buffett, explaining his long-term investing approach, wrote:

“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

Buffett’s maxim isn’t just smart investing advice. It’s a masterstroke of messaging.

1. The message is short and simple.

At just 12 words and under 70 characters, Buffett’s advice can easily fit in a social media post and still leave room for the writer’s own commentary.

Buffett didn’t clutter the line with extra qualifiers or multi-syllable abstractions such as “market sentiment” or “contrarian philosophy.” Each word is short, punchy, and easy to say.

The line is so simple, in fact, it’s written at a grade level appropriate for 11 to 12-year-old readers, according to a Flesch-Kincaid text analysis. Of course, most 10-year-olds wouldn’t understand the context of psychology and the stock market, but “fear” and “greed” are one-syllable, commonly understood words.

The best, most repeatable explanations are not long. They’re short, easy to process, use simple language, and pack a lot of information into a few words.

2. The message is emotional.

Buffett’s line packs a punch because he chose emotional language to make his point that fear and greed are “super contagious” among the investment community. And “they’ll forever occur,” he added.

Everyone gets the gist of these emotions, even an 11-year-old. They might not use the words fear or greed to explain their feelings, but they’ll understand what feels like to be scared or to want more than another kid in the class.

Industry jargon doesn’t translate into repeatable and powerful messages. Feelings do.

3. The message has structure.

Buffett’s advice is easy to remember because it’s written for the ear. It’s a line that sounds better than it looks in text.

The structure of the sentence is balanced, divided into two parts of five words that are exact mirrors of each other.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

The technical term for Buffett’s rhetorical structure is ‘antithesis,’ juxtaposing two opposing ideas to highlight the contrast between them. In this case, the opposing ideas are fear and greed.

Bottom line: it sounds good.

If you have big, bold ideas that you want people to remember and repeat, take a page from the Buffett playbook: Make your message short, simple, emotional, and rhythmic.

As to whether today’s investors are on the greedy end of the spectrum, Buffett has an answer for that, too. In his 1992 shareholder letter, he wrote, “The only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.”

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