The old culture had come out of poverty, out of English customs.

Personally, I’ve gotten so that I now use a kind of two-track analysis. First, what are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered? And second, what are the subconscious influences where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically conclusions in various ways — which, by and large, are useful — but which often malfunction? One approach is rationality… And the other is to evaluate the psychological factors that cause subconscious conclusions — many of which are wrong.

It's not the bad ideas that do you in, but the good ones.

A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.

You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.

It takes almost no capital to open a new See's candy store. We're drowning in capital of our own that has almost no cost. It would be crazy to franchise stores like some capital-starved pancake house. We like owning our own stores as a matter of quality control.

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