I find that the standard of living does not go up in proportion with the cost of living. The trick in life is to do things that are fun all the time.

No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

Stocks are the only thing that people are happy to buy when the price goes up.

That would be nice if [people] stuck [treasury bills] all under a mattress, but they got to buy something with them. Sometimes they buy a treasury note, sometimes they set up sovereign wealth funds. They can do all kinds of things. They can buy our companies here. As long as we consume more than we produce, and we trade away little pieces of the country daily, they're going to own something. Now, they can't run from American assets. I mean every day the rest of the world is going to have about two billion more of American assets than we have, as long as they sell us these goods.

Investors should remember that their scorecard is not computed using Olympic-diving methods: Degree-of-difficulty doesn't count. If you are right about a business whose value is largely dependent on a single key factor that is both easy to understand and enduring, the payoff is the same as if you had correctly analyzed an investment alternative characterized by many constantly shifting and complex variables.

We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.