Alas, my “fiddle playing” will not get me to Carnegie Hall — or even to a high school recital. Berkshire, on your behalf and mine, will send the Trea… - Warren Buffett

You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideals come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an ideal next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.

Ben is now 75 and, like Gene Abegg, 81, at Illinois National and Louie Vincenti, 73, at Wesco, continues daily to bring an almost passionately proprietary attitude to the business. This group of top managers must appear to an outsider to be an overreaction on our part to an OEO bulletin on age discrimination. While unorthodox, these relationships have been exceptionally rewarding, both financially and personally. It is a real pleasure to work with managers who enjoy coming to work each morning and, once there, instinctively and unerringly think like owners. We are associated with some of the very best.

As practiced, diversification makes very little sense for anyone that knows what they’re doing. Diversification is a protection against ignorance. If you want to make sure nothing bad happens to you relative to the market, sure you should diversify. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that...but in our view, true diversification is simply a confession that you do not truly understand the businesses that you own. If you find just 3 wonderful businesses in your lifetime, you'll get very rich.