“Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass.”

Common stock investors can make money by predicting the outcomes of practice evolution. You can’t derive this by fundamental analysis – you must think biologically.

When you locate a bargain, you must ask, ‘Why me, God? Why am I the only one who could find this bargain?’

All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.

Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer.

Your life must focus on the maximization of objectivity.

I like people admitting they were complete stupid horses’ asses. I know I’ll perform better if I rub my nose in my mistakes. This is a wonderful trick to learn.

The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.

Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.

To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

There are worse situations than drowning in cash and sitting, sitting, sitting. I remember when I wasn’t awash in cash — and I don’t want to go back.

Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well, two or three times, will make your family rich for life?

The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.

The more hard lessons you can learn vicariously rather than through your own hard experience, the better.

I’m not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I’ve reached that state.

Acknowledging what you don’t know is the dawning of wisdom.

The two most important things in any company do not appear in its balance sheet: its reputation and its people.

Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward.

Take our 20 best people away, and I will tell you that Microsoft will become an unimportant company.

We chose it because we deal with huge amounts of data. Besides, it sounds really cool.

The best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize the company.

I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.

You don’t need to have a 100 person company to develop that idea.

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.