“The men on the trading floor may not have been to school, but they have Ph.D.’s in man’s ignorance.”

“He was ignorant, but a lot of people mistook ignorance for stupidity, and knowingness for intelligence.”

“He was blessed with an unconventional mind, which overcame his conventional middle-class upbringing.”

“Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .”

“From the snap of the ball to the snap of the first bone is closer to four seconds than to five.and Lawrence Taylor (fearless tackle) WE all have fears, we all have fears!!”

“What baseball managers did do, on occasion, beginning in the early 1980s, was hire some guy who knew how to switch on the computer. But they did this less with honest curiosity than in the spirit of a beleaguered visitor to Morocco hiring a tour guide: pay off one so that the seventy-five others will stop trying to trade you their camels for your wife. Which one you pay off is largely irrelevant.”

“It is the nature of being the general manager of a baseball team that you have to remain on familiar terms with people you are continually trying to screw.”