You have to realize the truth of biologist Julian Huxley's idea that 'Life is just one damn relatedness after another' "So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness.

I think gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939, but civilized people don't buy gold, they invest in productive businesses.

One of the first big bubbles, of course, was the huge and horrible South Sea Bubble in England. And the aftermath was interesting. Many of you probably don't remember what happened after the South Sea Bubble, which caused an enormous financial contraction, and a lot of pain. They banned publicly traded stock in England for decades.

I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I've reached that state.

We like our current shareholders and don't want to entice anyone to become one. It would help current shareholders to hear our CEOs [of the Berkshireoperating subsidiaries], but we promised them they could spend 100% of their time on their business. We place no impediments on them running their businesses. Many have expressed to me how happy they are that they don't have to spend 25% of time on activities they didn't like.

We've got great flexibility and a certain discipline in terms of not doing some foolish thing just to be active - discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity.

There’s no way that you can live an adequate life without many mistakes. In fact, one trick in life is to get so you can handle mistakes. Failure to handle psychological denial is a common way for people to go broke.