For many of our shareholders, our stock is all they own, and we're acutely aware of that. Our culture [of conservatism] runs pretty deep.

Don't confuse correlation and causation. Almost all great records eventually dwindle.

You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies. I can never make it easy by saying, 'Here are three things.' You have to derive it yourself to ingrain it in your head for the rest of your life.

With Congress and the S.E.C. so heavily peopled by lawyers, and with lawyers having been so heavily involved in drafting financial disclosure documents now seen as bogus, there was a new "lawyer" joke every week. One such was: "The butcher says 'the reputation of lawyers has fallen dramatically', and the check-out clerk replies: "How do you fall dramatically off a pancake?

[With] closet indexing....you're paying a manager a fortune and he has 85% of his assets invested parallel to the indexes. If you have such a system, you're being played for a sucker.

I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things.

We've got great flexibility and a certain discipline in terms of not doing some foolish thing just to be active - discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity.