The question

What do you fear most?

Originally asked

Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire

The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Warren Buffett

Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
And now, you've got nine countries, including, you know, a guy in North Korea. I mean, and there will be, something will happen. And we worried enormously about it when there were two. And we had perfectly, we had really pretty sane leaders in Kennedy and Khrushchev. You know, I mean, you were not dealing with unstable people or anything like that.

Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 256 →
Dolly Parton American singer-songwriter, actress and businesswoman
Flipping my wig.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, November 2012 source ↗
Pauline McLynn Irish character actress and author
Not being able to breathe – I get very panicky at the thought.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 July 2023 source ↗
Ina Garten Cookery writer and shop owner
Pain. I told Jeffrey that if I have a really bad headache just pull the plug.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2016 source ↗

More from Warren Buffett

View profile →
Question What made you stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time? Time & hindsight
Well, I ran out of gas. You know, I got to be what, 93 at that time, or something like that. And it just – same reason I gave up teaching. I teach – I was – I taught every year from when I was 21 till 88 or 89, and there just came a period when your body said different things to you, and you should turn it over to somebody, just like I did at Berkshire.
Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗
Question What became visible only after your working life slowed down or ended? Time & hindsight
I go in every day to the office. I don't accomplish hardly anything. I mean, in terms of – it just takes me way longer to do things. And Greg is so good. It was kind of embarrassing how good he is, because he has covered – you know, we've got about 200 businesses within Berkshire, you know, that came about, and I can't name the manager's names or their wives names, or – and I haven't seen them, you know, in a long time.
Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC Squawk Box, 31 March 2026 source ↗
Question Who makes your work possible behind the scenes? Craft & work
We have two pieces of regrettable news this year. First, Gladys Kaiser, my friend and assistant for twenty-five years, will give up the latter post after the 1993 annual meeting, though she will certainly remain my friend forever. Gladys and I have been a team, and though I knew her retirement was coming, it is still a jolt.
Recorded His letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in the 1992 annual report, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., February 1993 source ↗
Question What lesson has mattered most in your life? Time & hindsight
The number one rule I give them is just not give them the golden rule. Do unto others, I'm not a religious guy, but, I mean, nobody said it any better in a couple thousand years than that, which may be why it's lasted to a certain degree too. I mean, more people are reading a 2000-year-old book about how to behave than anything that anybody's coming up with lately. Now it's got a lot of, particularly the Old Testament, it's got different kinds of stories, to some extent, but if the whole world lived by the golden rule, it would be such a more wonderful society.
Recorded Becky Quick, Interview at the 2026 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 2 May 2026 source ↗
Question What does everyone in your world seem to agree on that you think is wrong? Values & belief
The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.
Recorded His letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in the 1993 annual report, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., February 1994 source ↗

More on identity & self

Also answered this

Gino D'Acampo, Bobbi Brown, Ina Garten, Martha Stewart, Keith McNally, Christian Louboutin

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer