The sentence is Buffett’s own, in print. It appears — in quotation marks, in parentheses, with no attribution at all — in his 22 January 1969 letter to the limited partners of Buffett Partnership, Ltd., and again in his Berkshire Hathaway Chairman’s Letters for 2008 and 2013, where he hands the credit to his teacher Benjamin Graham.
“Price is what you pay, value is what you get” Price is what you pay, value is what you get. — Warren Buffett, letter to limited partners, Buffett Partnership, Ltd., 22 January 1969; used again in his 2008 and 2013 Berkshire Hathaway Chairman's Letters, where he credits the line to Benjamin Graham.
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In context
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Provenance
The documented source
Work
Buffett Partnership, Ltd. — Letter to Limited Partners
Date
22 January 1969 (the annual letter reviewing 1968)
Used again in
Berkshire Hathaway Chairman’s Letters, 2008 and 2013
Attribution in source
None in 1969; credited to Ben Graham in 2008 and 2013
Market price is irrelevant to us in the valuation of our controlling interests. … (“Price is what you pay. [sic] value is what you get”).
abridged
In the 1969 letter the sentence sits inside parentheses and quotation marks — the marks of a man quoting someone else — but Buffett names nobody. He would not name Ben Graham in connection with it until the 2008 Chairman’s Letter. The excerpt is reproduced exactly as the collected PDF prints it, full stop and lower-case “value” included; that collection is a transcription of typed originals and carries visible artifacts nearby (“se1f-checking”, “BUFFETT PARTNERSHIP. LTD.”), so its punctuation is not reliable evidence at this level of detail.
22 January 1969 — earliest use located: Buffett writes to his limited partners that market price is irrelevant to how he values a controlled business, then adds the line in parentheses and quotation marks, with no attribution (collected Buffett Partnership letters, p. 126 ↗).
14 March 1984 — the 1983 Chairman’s Letter ↗ carries a near-identical form, unattributed, in the See’s Candies section: “(In candy, as in stocks, price and value can differ; price is what you give, value is what you get.)” One word off — “give” for “pay” — twenty-five years before he named Graham.
27 February 2009 — in the 2008 Chairman’s Letter ↗ Buffett finally names a source: “Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’” This is the Graham-credited framing the internet copies.
28 February 2014 — the 2013 Chairman’s Letter ↗ calls it “Ben’s adage” and prints the comma form word-for-word, attached to a memory of buying his first copy of Graham’s The Intelligent Investor.
Across Berkshire’s official archive of annual letters, 1977–2024 ↗, the sentence in its familiar wording turns up in exactly two of them: 2008 and 2013. The only earlier appearance anywhere in that archive is the 1983 “price is what you give” variant above.
Every documented source for this line is modern and protected: the partnership letter dates from 1969 and the Berkshire Chairman’s Letters from 2009 and 2014, all far later than the 1931 US public-domain cutoff. Berkshire’s own letters index ↗ states that all shareholder letters include copyrighted material reproduced with permission. Short quotation for identification and comment is ordinary practice; wholesale reproduction is not.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
The credit Buffett refuses
Almost every repetition of this line stops at “Warren Buffett.” Buffett himself doesn’t — and the sourcing that circulates with it is usually a few decades late.
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AttributionBenjamin Graham Buffett’s own credit
Twice in print Buffett hands the line to his teacher: “Long ago, Ben Graham taught me…” in the 2008 Chairman’s Letter ↗, and “Ben’s adage” in 2013 ↗. What he describes is a teaching, not a citation, and the sentence is not among the sourced quotations on Wikiquote’s Benjamin Graham page ↗. Crediting Graham repeats Buffett’s claim; it does not verify it.
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SourceThe 2008 shareholder letter Thirty-nine years late
The 2008 letter is where Wikiquote sources it ↗ and where most citations stop. But Buffett had already used it on 22 January 1969, writing to the limited partners of Buffett Partnership, Ltd. — at a point when the partnership owned 70% of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (collected partnership letters, p. 126 ↗).
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SourceThe 20 January 1966 partnership letter Not in that letter
Oxford Essential Quotations ↗ files the line to Buffett’s “letter to partners, 20 January 1966”, sourced to Janet Lowe’s Warren Buffett Speaks, and that date is recirculated widely. The 20 January 1966 letter is reproduced in full in the same collected partnership letters ↗ and contains none of it — not “price is what”, not “value is what”, not “what you pay” or “what you get”. In the whole 1957–1970 collection the phrase occurs exactly once: 22 January 1969, p. 126.
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Wording“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” Punctuation drift
The line travels with a full stop, a semicolon or a comma depending on the retelling. Buffett’s 2008 letter ↗ uses a semicolon; his 2013 letter ↗ uses the comma that matches the popular form.
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Wording“Price is what you give, value is what you get.” The 1983 variant
Buffett printed a near-identical sentence a quarter-century earlier, in the See’s Candies section of the 1983 Chairman’s Letter ↗: “(In candy, as in stocks, price and value can differ; price is what you give, value is what you get.)” One word off, no attribution, and long before the 2008 letter that most citations treat as the debut.
✓The wording is Buffett’s, on paper, from 22 January 1969 ↗ — and by his own account the thought is Ben Graham’s.
Context
Why it mattered
In January 1969 Buffett was writing to his limited partners about a nuisance: they kept congratulating or commiserating with him about Berkshire Hathaway’s share price. His answer was blunt. Market price, he told them, was irrelevant to how he valued a business he controlled — he had marked Berkshire at 25 at yearend 1967 when the market said about 20, and at 31 at yearend 1968 when the market said about 37, and he would have done exactly the same at 15 or 50. Then, in parentheses and in quotation marks, came the line: “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”
Nearly four decades later, writing the 2008 Chairman’s Letter ↗ in the wreckage of the financial crisis, he reached for it again — this time naming a source: “Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that…” He used it once more in 2013 ↗, calling it “Ben’s adage” while recalling that buying his first copy of Graham’s The Intelligent Investor was the best investment he ever made.
Market price is irrelevant to us in the valuation of our controlling interests.
The Graham connection, in dates
Buffett enrolled at Columbia Business School specifically because Benjamin Graham taught there, took his master’s degree in 1951, and worked as a securities analyst at Graham-Newman Corp. from 1954 to 1956 (Wikipedia ↗). That is the window in which “long ago, Ben Graham taught me” would place the lesson — a classroom or an office, not a page.
The distinction matters for anyone citing the line. What is documented is Buffett writing it. What is asserted — by Buffett, credibly, but without a citation — is that Graham said it to him first.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 30 August 1930 · American investor · Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway
Warren Edward Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska on 30 August 1930 and enrolled at Columbia Business School after learning that Benjamin Graham taught there, earning his master’s degree in 1951 and then working as a securities analyst at Graham-Newman Corp. from 1954 to 1956. He ran Buffett Partnership, Ltd. through the 1960s — the vehicle whose letters to limited partners contain this line — before winding it down and building Berkshire Hathaway into the conglomerate he still chairs. His annual Chairman’s Letters, published on Berkshire’s own site since 1977, are the single largest source of quotations attributed to him, which is exactly why so many unsourced ones get pinned on him too.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Warren E. Buffett, letter to limited partners, Buffett Partnership, Ltd., 22 January 1969, in the collected Buffett Partnership letters (PDF, Ivey Business School), p. 126; repeated in Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 2008 Chairman’s Letter (dated 27 February 2009), p. 5, where Buffett credits Benjamin Graham, and in the 2013 Chairman’s Letter (dated 28 February 2014).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Price is what you pay, value is what you get’?” Last verified 4 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/price-is-what-you-pay-value-is-what-you-get/