“To win, the first thing you have to do is not lose.”

“The greatest investment a young person can make is in their own education, in their own mind. Because money comes and goes. Relationships come and go. But what you learn once stays with you forever.”

“The stock market is a wonderfully efficient mechanism for transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient.”

“All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.”

“A single year's performance is of minor importance and, good or bad, should never be taken seriously.”

“I don't want to give a lecture to this body that's out there. You know, I mean, having had the heart attack, I want to get it back functioning. And as a practical matter, I mean if you were Bear Stearns, and you were a shareholder, you know, you lost 90 to 95 percent of your money. A good many lost their jobs. They lost very cushy lives, many of them.”

“That's been lost. It's a huge problem. What you have is you have the major institutions of the world all wanting to deleverage. They want to take down their assets and liabilities. What seemed so easy to borrow against a year ago now looks like rat poison to them. So they're trying to deleverage. There is only one institution in the world that can leverage up in a way that's all a countervailing force to that, and that's the United States Treasury.”

“I did not think I would see the day when, you know, an AIG would not be able to have its checks clear.”