I know just enough about thermodynamics to understand that if it takes too much fossil-fuel energy to create ethanol, that's a very stupid way to solve an energy problem.

[In picking stocks] You really have to know a lot about business. You have to know a lot about competitive advantage. You have to know a lot about the maintainability of competitive advantage. You have to have a mind that quantifies things in terms of value. And you have to be able to compare those values with other values available in the stock market.

Accounting incomes were reduced by discrepancy [ but] "the net amount paid by lawyers for lawyerly discrepancy is close to zippo. In this case, the goddess of justice was blind.

One could imagine a period like Japan13 years ago, however, in which indexing over time wouldn't work.

A business model that relies on trickery is doomed to fail.

I try to get rid of people who always confidently answer questions about which they don't have any real knowledge.

The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients.