It would be easier to screw up American Express than Coke or Gillette, but it's an immensely strong business.

The average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can't beat the market. As I always say, the iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth. That's just the way it is.

We don't have any miraculous way of avoiding taxes at Wesco and Berkshire.

Your life must focus on the maximization of objectivity.

Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

I have concluded that most PhD economists under appraise the power of the common-stock-based "wealth effect," under current extreme conditions... "Wealth effects" involve mathematical puzzles that are not nearly so well worked out as physics theories and never can be... What has happened in Japan over roughly the last ten years has shaken up academic economics, as it obviously should, creating strong worries about recession from "wealth effects" in reverse.