Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

There is no perfect mathematical formula for pricing a business.

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.

Buy a business, don't rent stocks.

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.

If you're in a card game and you can't figure out who the patsy is, you're it.