My career has been full of remarkable coincidences that have nothing to do with me.

The trouble is that, while my parents were great when they were apart, they were terrible together.

If I'd been bright, I'd have realized that I was horribly uncomfortable, amazingly frustrated, and like any sensible person, I'd have quit. But it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be successful eventually.

Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.

I found an approach to investing that made enormous sense to me: rigorously analyzing a company's fundamentals, understanding exactly how it makes money, developing a view on the business's future prospects, and deciding if it's a good business.

African runners regularly work out in the United States and Europe, and the International Olympic Committee sends some of the cash from the Games to Olympic committees in poor nations, which use the money to finance their own programs.

Diversifying sufficiently among uncorrelated risks can reduce portfolio risk toward zero. But financial engineers should know that's not true of a portfolio of correlated risks.

I was only 21 when I bought a five-bedroom detached house in Stoke-on-Trent that was way outside of my financial status in life. I did it by borrowing money from my family and the bank, taking out a huge mortgage.