In the LBO field there is a buried "covariance" with marketable equities, toward disaster in generally bad business conditions, and competition is now extremely intense.

Everybody engaged in complex work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.”

If the technology hadn't changed, they [newspapers] would still be great businesses. Network TV [in its heyday], anyone could run and do well. If Tom Murphy as running it, you'd do very well, but even your idiot nephew could do well. Fortunately, carbide cutting tools [such as those made by Iscar] don't have these types of substitutes.

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.

The general systems of money management [today] require people to pretend to do something they can't do and like something they don't. It's a terrible way to spend your life, but it's very well paid.

In Gillette's case, they keep surfing along new technology which is fairly simple by the standards of microchips. But it's hard for competitors to do. So they've been able to stay constantly near the edge of improvements in shaving.

In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.