QUOTEBOX - Buffett and Munger, together again

April 30 (Reuters) - Warren Buffett fielded shareholder questions for about five hours at Saturday's annual meeting of his company Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N).

Buffett, 80, sat on a stage in the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska, a venue often used for rock and country music concerts and sports events, accompanied by Berkshire's Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 87.

The following are excerpts of what the octogenarians said:

- "I obviously made a big mistake by not saying, 'Well when did you buy it?'" -- Buffett on his failure to ask David Sokol when he bought stock in Lubrizol Corp LZ.N, a company Sokol recommended to Buffett that Berkshire buy. Sokol, thought a candidate to succeed Buffett, resigned in March when the stake was revealed. Berkshire agreed to buy Lubrizol in March for about $9 billion.

- "Hubris." -- Munger explaining Sokol's behavior.

- "For reasons that are laid out in the audit committee report, I don't think there's any question about the inexcusable part." -- Buffett on the Sokol matter. A committee of Berkshire's board has found that Sokol's "misleadingly incomplete disclosures" about his Lubrizol stake violated company policy.

- "Inexplicable and inexcusable" -- Buffett on the Sokol affair, using the same language he used 20 years ago to describe the failure by management at Salomon Brothers Inc, which he chaired, to tell regulators of wrongdoing tied to a Treasury bidding scandal.

- "What I've earned over the last year is, I'm going to have Charlie write the next press release." -- Buffett on criticism about Berkshire's original press statement announcing Sokol's resignation in which Buffett said: "Neither Dave nor I feel his Lubrizol purchases were in any way unlawful."

- "Certainly the candidate that I think is the leading candidate now, I would lay a lot of money on the fact that he is as straight as an arrow." -- Buffett on a potential successor as chief executive. Before Sokol left, Berkshire said it had four internal managers who could succeed Buffett.

- "I can't think of any decision Ajit Jain has ever made that I could make better." -- Buffett on Jain, a Berkshire insurance executive considered by many a leading candidate to succeed Buffett as Berkshire chief executive. Shareholders applauded his comments.

- "The next CEO will make a lot of money and should make a lot of money." -- Buffett, who takes a $100,000 annual salary to run Berkshire and is the world's third-richest person according to Forbes magazine, worth $50 billion.

- "We know we can't do remotely as well in the future as we did in the past." -- Buffett on Berkshire's ability to outperform other companies.

- "They're worth doing, but we can't do a really big elephant now, and we won't stretch." -- Buffett on Berkshire eyeing two acquisitions similar in size to Lubrizol, and that it cannot do a larger transaction, an "elephant", now.

- "I don't see how anybody can be other than enthused about this country." -- Buffett on prospects for United States.

- "There's something peculiar to buy an asset that will only really go up if the world goes to hell." -- Munger on rising prices for commodities, an asset class that Berkshire typically shuns as a direct investment.

- "We're unlikely to make another big currency bet." -- Buffett, who once had but later unwound a $21 billion bet against the U.S. dollar.

- "I predict the day that Berkshire declares a dividend, the stock will go down and it should go down." -- Buffett on Berkshire's refusal to pay a common stock dividend despite ending 2010 with $38.23 billion cash.

- "Don't ask the barber if you need a haircut. You don't want to ask the investment banker what the earnings are going to be in five years on something he wants to sell." -- Buffett on accepting advice from others.

- "Most asinine act." -- Buffett describing any failure by the U.S. Congress to raise the nation's $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, which expires on May 16. "The United States is not going to have a debt crisis of any kind as long as we keep issuing our notes in our own currency."

- "I have nothing to add." -- Munger's common riposte after Buffett finishes answering a shareholder question.

- "I have nothing to add." -- Buffett after Munger finished answering a shareholder question. (Reporting by Ben Berkowitz; Compiled by and additional reporting and writing by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Toni Reinhold)