I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am no investor.

I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.

Can you know you can have institutions that put curbs on that in various ways, and actually what the banks, you know, they have various capital ratios and that sort of thing, but the banks got around them, I mean, they set up sieves and that sort of thing just to get more leverage. People love leverage when it's working. I mean, it's so easy to borrow money from a guy at X and put it out at X.

The dominant factors affecting control valuations are earning power (past and prospective) and asset values.

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.

Managers that always promise to 'make the numbers' will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world in terms of what I do for a living. No one can tell me to do things I don't believe in or things I think are stupid.