The investment game always involves considering both quality and price, and the trick is to get more quality than you pay for in price. It's just that simple.

Berkshire was built on the eternal verities: basic mathematics, basic horse sense, basic fear, and basic diagnosis of human nature to make predictions regarding human behavior. We stuck to the basics with a certain amount of discipline and it has worked out quite well.

It's not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it - who look and sift the world for a mispriced bet - that they can occasionally find one. And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time they don't. It's just that simple.

It takes character to sit there with all that cash and do nothing. I didn't get to where I am by going after mediocre opportunities.

The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.

If you don't allow for self-serving bias in the conduct of others, you are, again, a fool.

Once you start doing something bad, then it's easy to take the next step - and in the end, you're a moral sewer.