Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

There has never been a master plan. Anyone who wanted to do it, we fired because it takes on a life of its own and doesn't cover new reality. We want people taking into account new information.

Even bright people are going to have limited, really valuable insights in a very competitive world when they're fighting against other very bright, hardworking people. And it makes sense to load up on the very few good insights you have instead of pretending to know everything about everything at all times.

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

This is an amazingly sound place. We are more disaster-resistant than most other places. We haven't pushed it as hard as other people would have pushed it. I don't want to go back to Go. I've been to Go. A lot of our shareholders have a majority of their net worth in Berkshire, and they don't want to go back to Go either.

The definition of hell in the legal system is: endless due process and no justice; (in the corporate world) it would be: endless due diligence and no horse sense.

One of the first big bubbles, of course, was the huge and horrible South Sea Bubble in England. And the aftermath was interesting. Many of you probably don't remember what happened after the South Sea Bubble, which caused an enormous financial contraction, and a lot of pain. They banned publicly traded stock in England for decades.