Wealth & Money Quote by Warren Buffett

Buffett’s line lands with the blunt confidence of someone who’s spent a lifetime being proved right, and it’s calibrated to do more than brag. “Always knew” turns wealth into destiny, a foregone conclusion rather than a lucky break or a socially contingent outcome. The casual “for a minute” is doing quiet rhetorical work: it shrinks doubt into something too small to even honor, a rounding error in the narrative.

The intent is partly mythmaking. Buffett’s public persona depends on the idea that riches can be engineered through temperament: patience, rationality, compounding, the boring virtues. By framing his future wealth as inevitable, he converts a complex mix of skill, access, historical timing, and an unusually stable psychological profile into a single clean trait: conviction. It’s a motivational story for capitalists and strivers alike, but it also deflects from the messier question of structural advantage. A white boy with a congressman father, early exposure to markets, and a mid-century American economy built for expansion is not starting from neutral. The quote doesn’t lie; it edits.

In context, it’s also a flex of investor psychology. Buffett sells the idea that the biggest edge isn’t secret information, it’s the ability to stay unshaken when others panic. “I never doubted” is a brand promise: he’s the adult in the room, immune to the crowd. The subtext is both comforting and slightly chilling - the assurance that money, for him, wasn’t a pursuit so much as an appointment.