Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year

You're not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here.

Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up.

I believe that we are at or near the apex of a great civilization... In 50-100 years, if we're a poor third to some countries in Asia, I wouldn't be surprised. If I had to bet, the part of the world that will do best will be Asia.

For some odd reason, I had an early and extreme multidisciplinary cast of mind. I couldn't stand reaching for a small idea in my own discipline when there was a big idea right over the fence in somebody else's discipline. So I just grabbed in all directions for the big ideas that would really work.

Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well, two or three times, will make your family rich for life?

In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time - none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads - at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.