Entrepreneurship Quotes

If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company.

[Entrepreneurship] is by no means hunch or gamble. But it also is not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.

I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance... Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through.

My dad is like a cactus - introverted and tough. I'm a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He's my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.

Entrepreneurs embody the promise of America: the idea that if you have a good idea and are willing to work hard and see it through, you can succeed in this country. And in fulfilling this promise, entrepreneurs also play a critical role in expanding our economy and creating jobs.

People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

I went online with winelibrary.com in July of 1997; that was my first professional online play.

I try to get people to see what I have. . . . When you run a computer company, you have to get people to buy into your dreams.

I sat in a garage and invented the future.

I'm a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don't even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.

There is never a bad time to start a business - unless you want to start a mediocre one.

Jets are probably $2.7 or $2.8 billion. I'm nowhere close to that. The good news is I don't want to buy the Jets tomorrow. I love the journey of being an entrepreneur more than I like of the idea of buying the Jets.

I'm concerned a little bit with the culture of celebrating the fundraise. My dad taught me that when you borrow money it's the worst day of your life.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

I admire Mark Zuckerberg... for not selling out, for wanting to make a company. I admire that a lot.

There has never been a better time in the history of time than right now to start a business.

Focus on something that has high value to someone else, be really rigorous in making that assessment, because natural human tendency is wishful thinking, so the challenge to entrepreneurs is telling what's the difference between really believing in your ideals and sticking to them as opposed to pursuing some unrealistic dream that doesn't actually have merit, be very rigorous in your self analysis, certainly being extremely tenacious, and just work like hell. Put in 80-100 hours every week. All these things improves the odds of success

I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.

I saw a sign at a gas station. It said 'help wanted'. There was another sign below it that said 'self service'. So I hired myself. Then I made myself the boss. I gave myself a raise. I paid myself. Then I quit.

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. This is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur.

My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.

Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.

[Young people] are showing enormous and entrepreneurship and working with each other across borders.

There are millions of business ideas out there but only a tiny percentage of businesses succeed.

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

Affiliate marketing has made businesses millions and ordinary people millionaires.

If you look at space companies, they've failed either because they've had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.

I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough.

I've wanted to do things; I wanted to build things, to get something going.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty. Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.

You know, Dr. Edwin Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organization to reflect that. Polaroid did that for some years, but eventually Dr. Land, one of those brilliant troublemakers, was asked to leave his own company - which is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of.

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it's really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don't see a viable competitor.

A lot of artists have a lot of different ventures, I think it's typical for a hip hop artist, at this point, to have a bunch of different ventures.

Network marketing is really the greatest source of grass-roots capitalism, because it teaches people how to take a small bit of capital, that is your time, and build the American dream.

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

I've always had a knack for branding, so even with the lemonade stands, it was "Gary's Lemonade Stand." I worked on the signs all day, more so than on the lemonade itself. Then I learned you had to make good lemonade to build an actual business, so that taught me about lifetime value and quality.

We in government should learn to look at our country with the eyes of the entrepreneur, seeing possibilities where others see only problems

The skill sets it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, a successful marketer, or a relevant celebrity is a different skill set than you needed ten years ago, even though that was the skill set that mattered for decades.

The real genius to make a marketplace flourish doesn't come from the government. It comes from the individual genius of its people.

Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

An amazing piece of advice for a lot of kids, 50-year-olds, whoever is listening right now: Saving money is a good strategy. I didn't have stuff, but it was because my parents were saving. They were saving. We didn't get toys. They told us to go outside and paint a rock. It was very, very smart because after seven or eight years, he was able to buy a liquor store of his own in Springfield, New Jersey - Shoppers Discount Liquors. He built up a great business.

My music will mean something. I'll have my own production company. I'm doing my own movies. I have my own restaurant. I just wanna expand.

Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced. Entrepreneurs need to search purposefully for the sources of innovation, the changes and their symptoms that indicate opportunities for successful innovation. And they need to know and to apply the principles of successful innovation.

You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you're asking for money!

What we need is an entrepreneurial society in which innovation and entrepreneurship are normal, steady and continuous.

Unless you've a lot of passion about this, you're not gonna survive. You're gonna give it up. So you've got to have an idea or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about, otherwise you're not gonna have the perseverance to stick it through. I think it's half the battle right there.

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you're an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party... My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.

2006, I started 'WineLibrary TV.' To build 'WineLibrary TV,' I started using Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter in 2008.

The Greek people are entrepreneurial.

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

If i will start all over again I would chose network marketing.

When everyone is looking for gold, it's a good time to be in the pick and shovel business.

Even though I'm a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I'm looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.

If you were a man, you'd go into businessfor yourself. I know a fellow who started out last year with just acanoe. Now he's got more women than you can shake a stick at, ifthat's your idea of a good time.

Capital formation is shifting from the entrepreneur who invests in the future to the pension trustee who invests in the past.