Risk is a part of God's game, alike for men and nations.

I am not worried about the country. I'm just worried about anything that gums up the potential of the country. And right now, it's pretty gummed up.

In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century.

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay.

If you can tell me who your heroes are, I can tell you how you're going to turn out in life.

I spend twelve hours a week - a little over 10% of my waking hours - playing the game. Now I am trying to figure out how to get by on less sleep in order to fit in a few more hands.

Basically, the single-most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power.