Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition.

Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business.

If you have only a little capital and are young today, there are fewer opportunities than when I was young. Back then, we had just come out of a depression. Capitalism was a bad word. There had been abuses in the 1920s. A joke going around then was the guy who said, 'I bought stock for my old age and it worked - in six months, I feel like an old man!' "It's tougher for you, but that doesn't mean you won't do well - it just may take more time. But what the heck, you may live longer."

You don't want to be like the motion picture exec who had so many people at his funeral, but they were there just make sure he was dead. Or how about the guy who, at his funeral, the priest said, "Won't anyone stand up and say anything nice for the deceased?" and finally someone said, "Well, his brother was worse."

The stupid and dishonest accountants allowed the genie of totally inappropriate accounting to descend on derivatives books. And once this has happened - people get status, etc. - it's impossible to get it back into the bottle.

The idea of excessive diversification is madness.

If you can buy the best companies, over time the pricing takes care of itself.