To us, investing is the equivalent of going out and betting against the pari-mutuel system. We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning, and that pays three to one. In other words, we're looking for a mispriced gamble. That's what investing is, and you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced.

For years I have read the morning paper and harrumphed. There's a lot to harrumph about now.

You'll better understand the evil when top audit firms started selling fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top-20 clients, so no-one would notice.

There are a lot of things in life way more important than money. All that said, some people do get confused. I play golf with a man who says, " What good is health? You can't buy money with it."

It would be easier to screw up American Express than Coke or Gillette, but it's an immensely strong business.

I don't spend much time regretting the past, once I've taken my lesson from it. I don't dwell on it.

A different set of incentives from rising in an economic establishment where the rewards system, again, the reinforcement, comes from being a truffle hound. That's what Jacob Viner, the great economist called it: the truffle hound - an animal so bred and trained for one narrow purpose that he wasn't much good at anything else, and that is the reward system in a lot of academic departments.