You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. - Warren Buffett

My partner, Charlie, says that there's only three ways that a smart person can go broke: liquor, ladies and leverage.

You couldn't advance in a finance department in this country unless you taught that the world was flat.

We prefer: large purchases (at least $5 million of after-tax earnings), demonstrated consistent earning power (future projections are of little interest to us, nor are “turn-around” situations), businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt, management in place (we can’t supply it), simple businesses (if there’s lots of technology, we won’t understand it), an offering price (we don’t want to waste our time or that of the seller by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown).