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

That's been lost. It's a huge problem. What you have is you have the major institutions of the world all wanting to deleverage. They want to take down their assets and liabilities. What seemed so easy to borrow against a year ago now looks like rat poison to them. So they're trying to deleverage. There is only one institution in the world that can leverage up in a way that's all a countervailing force to that, and that's the United States Treasury.

Everybody's got a different circle of competence. The important thing is not how big the circle is. The important thing is staying inside the circle.

At Berkshire, I both initiate and monitor every derivatives contract on our books ... If Berkshire ever gets in trouble, it will be my fault. It will not be because of the misjudgments made by a risk committee or chief risk officer.

In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love.

Stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: "Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth".

I think the rest of the country should be paying less, the 95 percent that [Barack] Obama talks about or maybe even a little higher than that.