I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way.

We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

The theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you're going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.

...in terms of business mistakes that I've seen over a long lifetime, I would say that trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes. I see terrible mistakes from people being overly motivated by tax considerations. Warren and I personally don't drill oil wells. We pay our taxes. And we've done pretty well, so far. Anytime somebody offers you a tax shelter from here on in life, my advice would be don't buy it.

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.

It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.

Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am.