An IPO is like a negotiated transaction - the seller chooses when to come public - and it's unlikely to be a time that's favourable to you.

We need a tax system that essentially takes very good care of the people who just really aren't as well adapted to the market system but are nevertheless doing useful things in the society.

In an inflationary world, a toll bridge (like company) would be a great thing to own because you've laid out the capital costs. You built it in old dollars and you don't have to keep replacing it.

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

If you've got a good enough business, if you have a monopoly newspaper, if you have a network television station - I'm talking of the past - you know, your idiot nephew could run it. And if you've got a really good business, it doesn't make any difference.

Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.

It's just that I landed up in a terrific capitalist system. One that pays people who allocate capital extraordinarily well. Intrinsically, I'm not worth as much as somebody who invents something that could improves people's life, or health or whatever.