Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.

If you turn on the television, you'll find the mothers of the most obvious criminals that man could ever diagnose, and they all think their sons are innocent. That's simple psychological denial. The reality is too painful to bear, so you just distort it until it's bearable. We all do that to some extent, and it's a common psychological misjudgment that causes terrible problems.

I don't invest in what I don't understand. And I don't want to understand Facebook.

Harvard and Yale concentrated with venture capitalists that got the best calls and brainpower. Very few firms made most of the money, and they made it in just a few periods. Everyone else returned between mediocre and lousy. When returns happened, envy rippled through institutional money management. The amount invested in venture capital went up 10 times post-1999. That later money was lost very quickly. It will happen again. I don't know anyone who successfully resists this stuff. It becomes a new orthodoxy.

Trying to prioritize among things we're unlikely to do is pretty fruitless.

In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time - none ... ZERO.