Over and over again, financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious, 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over, they ignobly fail, because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives, except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them.

Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward and give us victories.

Abraham Lincoln

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.

Thomas Jefferson

Love, by its very nature, is unworldly, and it is for this reason rather than its rarity that it is not only apolitical but anti-political, perhaps the most powerful of all anti-political human forces.

Hannah Arendt

Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

Ambrose Bierce

People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.

Rem Koolhaas

I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol.

Steven Seagal

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

Zig Ziglar

Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.

Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

Money cannot buy happiness.

Annni-Frid Lyngstad

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of frendship or affection.

Bertrand Russell

Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power.

Jon Meacham

I have made decisions that turned out to be wrong, and went back and did it another way, and still took less time than many who procrastinated over the original decision. Your brain is capable of handling 140, 000 million bits of information in one second, and if you take hours or days or weeks to reach a vital decision, you are short-circuiting your most valuable property.

Jerry Gillies