When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a break requires - now or down the line - that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can however, determine who pays for lunch.
What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note that word “selected”: You don't have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.
We have learned to turn out lots of goods and services, but we haven't learned as well how to have everybody share in the bounty. The obligation of a society as prosperous as ours is to figure out how nobody gets left too far behind.
When you get to my age, you’ll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That’s the ultimate test of how you’ve lived your life.
Confidence in markets and in institutions, it's a lot like oxygen. When you have it, you don't even think about it. It's indispensable. You can go years without thinking about it. When it's gone for five minutes, it's the only thing to think about.