Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

Warren Buffett has repeated this hiring maxim in talks and interviews as part of his broader emphasis on character and trustworthiness in business. He often frames it as advice he learned from others (“somebody once said”), using it to explain why Berkshire Hathaway relies heavily on decentralized management: when you give managers autonomy, integrity becomes the essential safeguard. The line is typically delivered in the context of discussing how to evaluate people—especially leaders and managers—where technical skill and drive can amplify harm if paired with dishonesty. Buffett uses the blunt punchline (“you want them to be dumb and lazy”) to make the risk memorable.

Buffett frames hiring as a character-first decision. Intelligence and energy are powerful multipliers: in a person with integrity, they amplify good judgment, initiative, and long-term value creation; without integrity, they amplify harm—speeding up bad decisions, unethical shortcuts, and organizational damage. The punchline (“you really want them to be dumb and lazy”) is a deliberately stark way to say that capability without trustworthiness is not merely unhelpful but actively dangerous. The quote reflects Buffett’s broader emphasis on reputation, incentives, and culture: a firm’s durability depends less on raw talent than on whether talent is reliably aligned with honest dealing and stewardship.

Commonly circulated variants include: (1) “In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But if they don’t have integrity, the other two will kill you.” (2) “If you’re going to hire somebody without integrity, you want them to be dumb and lazy.” (3) “Somebody once said… integrity, intelligence, and energy; if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”