The stupid and dishonest accountants allowed the genie of totally inappropriate accounting to descend on derivatives books. And once this has happened - people get status, etc. - it's impossible to get it back into the bottle.

We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning and which pays you three to one.

It's simplicity itself that its future will be way worse than its past.

All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there

A rough rule in life is that an organization foolish in one way in dealing with a complex system is all too likely to be foolish in another.

I get flack for saying [when I visit a college and give a speech], "This is a nice college, but the really great educator is McDonald's." They hate me for saying this and think I'm a slimy creature. But McDonald's hires people with bad work habits, trains them, and teaches them to come to work on time and have good work habits. I think a lot of what goes on there is better than at Harvard.

Proper accounting is like engineering. You need a margin of safety. Thank God we don't design bridges and airplanes the way we do accounting.