You've got to have models in your head and you've got to array you experience - both vicarious and direct - onto this latticework of mental models.

Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome

The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.

We get these questions a lot from the enterprising young. It's a very intelligent question: You look at some old guy who's rich and you ask, 'How can I become like you, except faster?'

Opportunity comes to the prepared mind.

Practically everybody (1) overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.

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