Good ideas are like Nike sports shoes. They may facilitate success for an athlete who possesses them, but on their own they are nothing but an overpriced pair of sneakers. Sports shoes don't win races. Athletes do.

Computers are wasteful of paper and time. Once, we'd get documents with a few errors. Now, people make hundreds of copies until each sheet is flawless and memos are duplicated endlessly. Managers get swamped with emails.

For a start, the salary begins to have an attraction and addictiveness all of its own. A regular paycheck and crack cocaine have that in common. In addition, and more to the point, working too long for other people can blunt your desire to take risks. This last factor is crucial, because the ability to live with and embrace risk is what sets apart the financial winners and losers in the world.

It's very difficult to be continuously charitable in a capitalistic society. You've also got to make sure that you can pay everyone who works for you.

Obviously, waste disposal is an enormous and fantastic industry.

The beginnings of a forest is one of the ugliest things on the planet. It's bleak and your neighbours hate you.

If the influence of luck is a delusion, then all I can say is that the delusion is virtually universal.