We've had public companies in the past in that business and they bleed. We've got a lot more blood than they do.

In the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth.

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

Trust is like the air we breathe--when it's present, nobody really notices; when it's absent, everybody notices.

I don't know that I could draw one that's perfect. But I'd rather by approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down.

Our marketable equities tell us by their operating results - not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations - whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it.

Never depend on a single source of income.