The general culture of investment banking has deteriorated over the years. We did a $6 million deal years ago for Diversified Retailing and we were rigorously and intelligently screened. They bankers cared and wanted to protect their clients. The culture now is that anything that can be sold for a profit will be. 'Can you sell it?' is the moral test, and that's not an adequate test.

Hard work, honesty, if you keep at it, will get you almost anything.

I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do.

The ethos of not fooling yourself is one of the best you could possibly have. It's powerful because it's so rare.

...by regularly reading business newspaper and magazines I am exposed to an enormous amount of material at the micro level.. I find that what I see going on there pretty much informs me about what's happening at the macro level.

Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.

Fixable but unfixed bad performance is bad character and tends to create more of itself, causing more damage to the excuse giver with each tolerated instance.