It's never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.

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.

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.

The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.

A pack of lemmings looks like a group of rugged individualists compared with Wall Street when it gets a concept in its teeth.

As of 1992, in fact-though the picture would have improved since then-the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero.

The plan itself is opportunism. There is no plan before that.