A Quote by Warren Buffett

The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
If the F.A.A. was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk.
In honoring the Wright Brothers, it is customary and proper to recognize their contribution to scientific progress. But I believe it is equally important to emphasize the qualities in their pioneering life and the character in man that such a life produced. The Wright Brothers balanced sucess with modesty, science with simplicity. At Kitty Hawk their intellects and senses worked in mutual support. They represented man in balance, and from that balance came wings to lift a world.
I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.
If the Wright Brothers were alive today, Orville would have to lay off Wilbur.
I was attacked the other night for being grandiose. I would just want you to note: Lincoln standing at Council Bluffs was grandiose. The Wright Brothers standing at Kitty Hawk were grandiose. John F. Kennedy was grandiose. I accept the charge that I am grandiose and that Americans are instinctively grandiose.
The huge advantage of boarding school is that it throws you into the social fire. Every social interaction I've had since then has been a million times easier. Literally, ever since then, it's all been child's play.
Over the long term, it's hard for a stock to earn a much better return that the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns six percent on capital over forty years and you hold it for that forty years, you're not going to make much different than a six percent return - even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns eighteen percent on capital over twenty or thirty years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you'll end up with one hell of a result.
Picasso had nicknamed Georges Braque "Wilbur," thereby becoming "Orville" in their Wright Brothers-like ambition to get painting off the ground of conventional representation.
When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.
Among all the marvels of modern invention, that with which I am most concerned is, of course, air transportation. Flying is perhaps the most dramatic of recent scientific attainment. In the brief span of thirty-odd years, the world has seen an inventor's dream first materialized by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk become an everyday actuality.
For many years, we have had these campaign finance reforms, and they have been failures. Money is more coursing through our system than ever before. Incumbents have used the laws to advantage themselves. And one of the reasons I think they have been failures is we have tried to crush down the money in places like the political parties, and it has squished out into opaque super PACs and sort of hidden channels.
I think Obama has been skilled and farsighted in a lot of the stuff that he's done. And in other things, unskilled and not farsighted. On balance I'd say that he is doing most of what he said he'd do.
Companies with significant revenue (more than $100 million) have, by definition, significant traction. They have proven out their thesis and can scale up or down as investment capital becomes available.
I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn't get off the ground.
I was shooting all this time. And there was only one guy who helped to pull him. And I had to think whether I was going to keep shooting or help the guy. And so I kept shooting and then they put him in this little clinic, and I photographed through the window while they had to amputate his leg. And I felt very strange because I didn't - I felt I could have helped, but I didn't help. But then I also felt elated that I was getting a shot that would be important to the film.
Movies are details. Movies are billions of details that come into a certain moment. So with all the years and months and weeks and days and minutes of preparation, then finally you're shooting and it all comes down to these moments when you're shooting, which is sort of insane when you think about it. The details make a difference.
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