Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay. The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse CEO - aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo - all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.

You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies. You have to find the companies that are off the map - way off the map.

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

It takes 150 years to build an investment bank and only five minutes to convince you to sell me preferred stock in it at a 10% interest rate.

Failure comes from ego, greed, envy, fear, imitation. I have success not because I am smart, but because I am rational.

I don't have my diploma from the University of Nebraska hanging on my office wall, and I don't have my diploma from Columbia up there either-but I do have my Dale Carnegie graduation certificate proudly displayed.

Stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: "Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth".