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· "Warren is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you."
· "How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?"
· "There are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested - there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, 'There's all of my profit.' We hate that kind of business."
· "We have this investment discipline of waiting for a fat pitch. If I was offered the chance to go into business where people would measure me against benchmarks, force me to be fully invested, crawl around looking over my shoulder, etc., I would hate it. I would regard it as putting me into shackles."
· "You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life."
· "What matters most: passion or competence that was born in? Berkshire is full of people who have a peculiar passion for their own business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power."
· "There are actually businesses, that you will find a few times in a lifetime, where any manager could raise the return enormously just by raising prices - and yet they haven't done it. So they have huge untapped pricing power that they're not using. That is the ultimate no-brainer ... Disney found that it could raise those prices a lot and the attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells ... came from just raising prices at Disneyland and Disney World and through video cassette sales of classic animated movies... At Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See's Candy a little faster than others might have. And, of course, we invested in Coca-Cola which had some untapped pricing power. And it also had brilliant management. So a Goizueta and Keough could do much more than raise prices. It was perfect."
· "We both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think. So Warren and I do more reading and thinking and less doing than most people in business. We do that because we like that kind of a life. But we've turned that quirk into a positive outcome for ourselves."
· "The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights... And you're probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It's just that simple."
· "Darwin probably changed my life because I'm a biography nut, and when I found out the way he always paid extra attention to the disconfirming evidence and all these little psychological tricks. I also found out that he wasn't very smart by the ordinary standards of human acuity, yet there he is buried in Westminster Abbey. That's not where I'm going, I'll tell you."
· "The investment game is getting more and more competitive."
· "If [investing] weren't a little difficult, everybody would be rich."
· "Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am."
· "Warren is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles who outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you."
· "How could economics not be behavioral? If it isn't behavioral, what the hell is it?"
· "There are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested - there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, 'There's all of my profit.' We hate that kind of business."
· "We have this investment discipline of waiting for a fat pitch. If I was offered the chance to go into business where people would measure me against benchmarks, force me to be fully invested, crawl around looking over my shoulder, etc., I would hate it. I would regard it as putting me into shackles."
· "You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life."
· "What matters most: passion or competence that was born in? Berkshire is full of people who have a peculiar passion for their own business. I would argue passion is more important than brain power."
· "There are actually businesses, that you will find a few times in a lifetime, where any manager could raise the return enormously just by raising prices - and yet they haven't done it. So they have huge untapped pricing power that they're not using. That is the ultimate no-brainer ... Disney found that it could raise those prices a lot and the attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells ... came from just raising prices at Disneyland and Disney World and through video cassette sales of classic animated movies... At Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See's Candy a little faster than others might have. And, of course, we invested in Coca-Cola which had some untapped pricing power. And it also had brilliant management. So a Goizueta and Keough could do much more than raise prices. It was perfect."
· "We both insist on a lot of time being available almost every day to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. We read and think. So Warren and I do more reading and thinking and less doing than most people in business. We do that because we like that kind of a life. But we've turned that quirk into a positive outcome for ourselves."
· "The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights... And you're probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It's just that simple."
· "Darwin probably changed my life because I'm a biography nut, and when I found out the way he always paid extra attention to the disconfirming evidence and all these little psychological tricks. I also found out that he wasn't very smart by the ordinary standards of human acuity, yet there he is buried in Westminster Abbey. That's not where I'm going, I'll tell you."
· "The investment game is getting more and more competitive."
· "If [investing] weren't a little difficult, everybody would be rich."
· "Is there such thing as a cheerful pessimist? That's what I am."
