Writing checks to the IRS that include strings of zeros does not bother me ... Overall, we feel extraordinarily lucky to have been dealt a hand in life that enables us to write large checks to the government rather than one requiring the government to regularly write checks to us-say, because we are disabled or unemployed.

Mr. Market is your servant, not your guide.

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return.

Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change.

The one piece of advice I can give you is, do what turns you on. Do something that if you had all the money in the world, you’d still be doing it. You’ve got to have a reason to jump out of bed in the morning.

As of 1992, in fact-though the picture would have improved since then-the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.