Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom.

Our job is to find a few intelligent things to do, not to keep up with every damn thing in the world.

After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements, but have cost us many billions.

If you, like me, lived through 1973-74 or even the early 1990s... There was a waiting list to get OUT of the country club - that's when you know things are tough. If you live long enough, you'll see it.

Mutual funds charge 2% per year and then brokers switch people between funds, costing another 3-4 percentage points. The poor guy in the general public is getting a terrible product from the professionals. I think it's disgusting. It's much better to be part of a system that delivers value to the people who buy the product. But if it makes money, we tend to do it in this country.

Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat.

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.