Is management candid with the shareholders?

I mean, they were getting the mortgage of some guy in Omaha, you know, securitized a couple of times. I mean he had all these - they had all these types from Wall Street, you know, and they had advanced degrees, and they look very alert, and they came with these - they came with these things that said gamma and alpha and sigma and all that. And all I can say is beware of geeks, you know, bearing formulas. They've heard that in Europe.

Charlie and I decided long ago that in an investment lifetime, it's too hard to make hundreds of smart decisions. That judgment became ever more compelling as Berkshire's capital mushroomed and the universe of investments that could significantly affect our results shrank dramatically. Therefore, we adopted a strategy that required our being smart and not too smart at that, only a very few times. Indeed, we now settle for one good idea a year.

I mean the truth is, I've never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I've ever paid in my life.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.

You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies. You have to find the companies that are off the map - way off the map.