Recognize reality even when you don't like it-especially when you don't like it.

The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.

In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting.

In the corporate world, if you have analysts, due diligence, and no horse sense, you've just described hell.

I see almost no change in the price of the composite product that flows through Costco I don't feel sorry for the people who pay $27 million for an 8,000-square-foot condo in Manhattan. So inflation comes in places.

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.

Strategic plans cause more dumb decisions than anything else in America.