The number one idea is to view a stock as an ownership of the business and to judge the staying quality of the business in terms of its competitive advantage. Look for more value in terms of discounted future cash-flow than you are paying for. Move only when you have an advantage.

When it gets into these spikes, with shortages and uproar and so forth, people go bananas, but that's capitalism.

An idea or a fact is not worth more merely because it's more available to you.

In investment management today, everybody wants not only to win, but to have a yearly outcome path that never diverges very much from a standard path except on the upside. Well, that is a very artificial, crazy construct. That's the equivalent in investment management to the custom of binding the feet of Chinese women

A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.

You can hire your advisor and then just apply a windage factor, like I used to do when I was a rifle shooter. I'd just adjust for so many miles an hour wind. Or you can learn the basic elements of your advisor's trade. You don't have to learn very much, by the way, because if you learn just a little then you can make him explain why he's right.

I'm used to people with very high IQs knowing how to recognize reality, but there's a huge human tendency where it may be instructive to think that whatever you're doing to succeed is all right.