I mean, if Pearl Harbor came along, you could have said the planning was wrong by the military ahead of time or maybe the battleships shouldn't have all been in the harbor and all that kind of thing.

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.

You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.

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.

When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked.

Fund consultants like to require style boxes such as "long-short," "macro," "international equities." At Berkshire our only style box is "smart."