Over the years, Charlie [Munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] and I have observed many accounting-based frauds of staggering size. Few of the perpetrators have been punished; many have not even been censured. It has been far safer to steal large sums with pen than small sums with a gun.
Jewish history has been tragic to the Jews and no less tragic to the neighboring nations who have suffered them. Our major vice of old as of today is parasitism. We are a people of vultures living on the labor and good fortune of the rest of the world.
The most effective way of attacking vice is to expose it to public ridicule. People can put up with rebukes but they cannot bear being laughed at: they are prepared to be wicked but they dislike appearing ridiculous.
Vice is a dreary business. And virtue is not a lot of fun, either.
If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it.
I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue.
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone.
Vice may be learnt, even without a teacher
Prudence is a quality incompatible with vice, and can never be effectively enlisted in its cause.
When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.
albinos aren't reproached for having pink eyes and whitish hair, why should they hold it again me for being a lesbian? It's a question of nature: my queerness isn't a vice, isn't 'deliberate,' and harms no one.
He, who practices right, but in the hope of acquiring great renown, is very near to vice.
There is no truth which personal vice will not distort.
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
The impression that you are a demigod worried me. I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.
No exile at the South Pole or on the summit of Mont Blanc separates us more effectively from others than the practice of a hidden vice.
It [horror genre] never dies. It just keeps getting reinvented and it always will. Horror is a universal language; we're all afraid. We're born afraid, we're all afraid of things: death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one. Everything that I'm afraid of, you're afraid of and vice versa. So everybody feels fear and suspense.
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
The general tendency [is] to be censorious of the vices to which one has not been tempted.
It is said that any virtue when taken to an extreme can become a vice. Overscheduling our days would certainly qualify for this. There comes a point where milestones can become millstones and ambitions, albatrosses around our necks.
