The beauty of a financial institution is that there are a lot of ways to go to hell in a bucket. You can push credit too far, do a dumb acquisition, leverage yourself excessively - it's not just derivatives [that can bring about your downfall].

It took us months of buying all the Coke stock we could to accumulate $1 billion worth - equal to 7% of the company. It's very hard to accumulate major positions.

[In picking stocks] You really have to know a lot about business. You have to know a lot about competitive advantage. You have to know a lot about the maintainability of competitive advantage. You have to have a mind that quantifies things in terms of value. And you have to be able to compare those values with other values available in the stock market.

At Berkshire Hathaway we do not like to compete against Chinese manufacturers.

Litigation is notoriously time-consuming, inefficient, costly and unpredictable.

The tax code gives you an enormous advantage if you can find some things you can just sit with.

The tradition of always looking for the answer in the most fundamental way available - that is a great tradition, and it saves a lot of time in this world.