I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span.

...by regularly reading business newspaper and magazines I am exposed to an enormous amount of material at the micro level.. I find that what I see going on there pretty much informs me about what's happening at the macro level.

If the value of a company doesn't just scream out at you, it's too close.

And maybe the cereal makers by and large have learned to be less crazy about fighting for market share-because if you get even one person who's hell-bent on gaining market share.... For example, if I were Kellogg and I decided that I had to have 60% of the market, I think I could take most of the profit out of cereals. I'd ruin Kellogg in the process. But I think I could do it.

I've been associated with Warren ( Buffett) so long, I thought I'd be just a footnote.

It's hard to predict what will happen with two brands in a market. Sometimes they will behave in a gentlemanly way, and sometimes they'll pound each other. I know of no way to predict whether they'll compete moderately or to the death. If you could figure it out, you could make a lot of money.

[GEICO] got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses. All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there.