Warren Buffett did not say “The stock market is a device to transfer money from the ‘impatient’ to the ‘patient’.”
Or at least I can’t find any source for that exact quote, other than several self-referencing news articles.
However, a similar quote does appear in his 1991 letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway:
As usual the list reflects our Rip Van Winkle approach to investing. Guinness is a new position. But we held the other seven
stocks a year ago (making allowance for the conversion of our Gillette position from preferred to common) and in six of those we hold an unchanged number of shares. The exception is Federal Home Loan Mortgage (“Freddie Mac”), in which our shareholdings increased slightly. Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient. (With tongue only partly in check, I suggest that recent events indicate that the much-maligned “idle rich” have received a bad rap: They have maintained or increased their wealth while many of the “energetic rich” – aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. – have seen their fortunes disappear.)
It appears that people are paraphrasing Warren Buffet, who wrote “the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.“