The only intelligence investing is value investing...to acquire more than one is paying for.

To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.

Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant.

Any year that you don't destroy one of your best-loved ideas is probably a wasted year

When we were young, there weren't very many smart people in the investment world. You should have seen the people in the bank trust departments. Now, there are armies of smart people at private investment funds, etc . If there were a crisis now, there would be a lot more people with a lot of money ready to take advantage.

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