Quotes of the day

I decided I didn't want a casino sitting on top of my bank.--Ed Clark, TD Bank CEO, on why he shut down his structured products business in 2005

This is the kind of thinking you get when you hire someone to do your political deep thinking who can’t remember the Reagan admin and was still in high school in the Clinton admin. And apparently doesn’t know his Uncle Remus.--Jules Crittenden

... we have consulted with top experts in the field from MIT and from private industry and from the CIA. . . . Frankly, some of the people we've consulted are shocked by the sophistication of the equipment [Iran is] buying.--Robert Morgenthau, Manhattan District Attorney

Sarbanes-Oxley is one of those Congressional classics, passed amid the post-Enron panic, that has done much harm at great cost. Its biggest beneficiaries have been the same accounting firms the law sought to punish and which have nonetheless been able to charge far more money for their services. The law also did nothing to detect problems with the ratings and valuation of subprime mortgaged-back securities. We can only hope the High Court sends Congress back to the drawing board.--WSJ Editorial Board

The more I read about [Thomas Jefferson], the more I dislike him. He was without doubt a man of incandescent brilliance. But he also seems to have been sly, creepy, and an insufferable snob, in addition to having been a racist, slaveholding, anti-cosmopolitan, anti-commercial, Jacobin utopian.--Will Wilkinson

My goal in life is to get to the place that I can take the same idea and just repackage it over and over again, like Bruce Willis did with "Die Hard," or Bill O'Reilly does with the whole thing about being rich, white, male and entitled -- and be really pissed off about how he's treated by the world.--Malcolm Gladwell

What's the defining fact about [Nick] Faldo? His ex-girlfriend once destroyed his Porsche with a 9-iron. The corresponding fact for [Tiger] Woods is that his favorite band is Hootie and the Blowfish.--Malcolm Gladwell

... a press can only work professionally if you are using guys who carry $10s and $20s in their wallets instead of $100s.--Bill Simmons

... is there any other industry in the world (well, outside of Detroit) so terrified of innovation?--Malcolm Gladwell

And that's the thing I worry about with LeBron [James]. You say that this could go on for as long as he wants, but the truth is these things rarely go on for as long as anyone wants. U2 is a weird exception. In most cases, John [Lennon] turns on Paul [McCartney], Axl [Rose] gets fat and Kurt Cobain commits suicide.--Malcolm Gladwell