Buffett found it 'extraordinary' that academics studied such things. They studied what was measurable, rather than what was meaningful. 'As a friend [Charlie Munger] said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Buffett was a billionaire who drove his own car, did his own taxes, and still lived in a home he had bought in 1958 for $31,500. He seemed to answer to a deeply rooted, distinctly American mythology, in which decency and common sense triumphed over cosmopolitan guile, and in which an idealized past held firm against a rootless and too hurriedly changing present.

Buffett does enjoy being a billionaire, but in offbeat ways. As he put it, though money cannot change your health or how many people love you, it lets you be in 'more interesting environments.

One has to divide Warren Buffet into different periods. There is a continuously evolving style of Warren Buffett.

With Kickstarter, people are patrons of the arts. With Mosaic, people can be clean-energy investors like Warren Buffett.

When Warren Buffett invests in a company, he is conferring upon that company something very unique: his credibility.