How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind?... I think that these behavioral economics...or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology.

Size will hurt returns. Look at Berkshire Hathaway - the last five things Warren has done have generated returns that are splendid by historical standards, but now give him $100 billion in assets and measure outcomes across all of it, it doesn't look so good. We can only buy big positions, and the only time we can get big positions is during a horrible period of decline or stasis. That really doesn't happen very often.

In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.

The normal expectancy of the average investor - for example, the pension funds of AT&T or IBM - is 6% for a long time.

Part of [having uncommon sense] is being able to tune out folly, as opposed to recognizing wisdom. If you bat away many things, you don't clutter yourself.

A banker who is allowed to borrow money at X and loan it out at X plus Y will just go crazy and do too much of it if the civilization doesn't have rules that prevent it.

The idea of caring is that someone is making money faster [than you are] is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?