quotes by Businessman Quotes

“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. The person sitting in the shade now should be grateful for the person who planted and tended that tree. That includes all those benefactors of humanity throughout history that created, invented, financed, produced, maintained and improved all that we enjoy today.”

“If we start deciding, based on guesses or emotions, whether we will or won't participate in a business where we should have some long run edge, we're in trouble.”

“The day I was born songs were on records, phones were tied down, computers needed rooms and the web was fiction. Change the world. You can.”

“I genuinely believe that any business can create a competitive advantage through giving outstanding customer care.”

“I know now why you cry, but it's something I can never do.”

“That's what Walt Disney did, and Hewlett and Packard, and the people who built Intel. They created a company to last, not just to make money. That's what I want Apple to be.”

“My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.”

“It's lonely at the top - if you don't like that, then you don't start a company.”

“Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date.”

“One day, you might look up and see me playing the game at 50. Don't laugh. Never say never, because limits, like fears, are often just an illusion.”

“I have made the mistaken assumption - and I will attempt to be better at this - of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake.”

“You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”

“America should stand for more than just wealth.”

“I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.”

“I am free to make anything I want as long as I think it will sell.”

“I do not have a problem, I enjoy gambling, but I think people are trying to make it seem like I have a problem, because people really don't know.”

“I think it is important that we go and bring both of the parties together. The more we go to the left, the more we go to the right, I believe of what President Eisenhower said, "Politics is like the road. The left and the right represents the gutter, and the middle is drivable."”

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”

“Consciously paying more for a stock than its calculated value - in the hope that it can soon be sold for a still-higher price - should be labelled speculation”

“We try to exert a Ted Williams kind of discipline. In his book The Science of Hitting, Ted explains that he carved the strike zone into 77 cells, each the size of a baseball. Swinging only at balls in his "best" cell, he knew, would allow him to bat .400; reaching for balls in his "worst" spot, the low outside corner of the strike zone, would reduce him to .230. In other words, waiting for the fat pitch would mean a trip to the Hall of Fame; swinging indiscriminately would mean a ticket to the minors.”

“Through discipline, and determination one can change anything and everything about him - his habits, his outlook on life”

“I know if I stopped hosting 'Wine Library TV,' we'd probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.”

“A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job”

“I started SpaceX with the expectation of failure.”

“Do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the most important thing.”

“If at first you do succeed, quit trying on investing.”

“Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing.”

“I basically expect anything. Isn't that wild? I used to surprise myself a lot: certain moves, how I'd get out of trouble. But at some point, you accept the talent that you have, you accept your creativity.”

“Good salespeople sell value and social media is the best place to find this value because of its transparency.”

“There's only one Michael Jordan.”

“When I take a look at a company's annual report, if I don't understand it, they don't want me to understand it.”

“Please think about your legacy, because you're writing it every day.”

“You get what I call the natural progression, the three Is. The innovators, the imitators, and the idiots.”

“If I would have listened to the naysayers, I would still be in the Austrian Alps yodeling.”

“Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we're going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.”

“You pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus.”

“I can't promise results, but I can promise a common destiny.”

“That's my job - to make sure everything is great.”

“I have a great respect for incremental improvement, and I've done that sort of thing in my life, but I've always been attracted to the more revolutionary changes. I don't know why. Because they're harder. They're much more stressful emotionally. And you usually go through a period where everybody tells you that you've completely failed.”

“When you have feelings like sadness or anger about your cancer or your plight, to mask them is to lead an artificial life.”

“It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.”

“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.”

“I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.”

“If you're afraid of failing you won't get very far”

“If you don't back it up with performance and hard work, talking doesn't mean a thing.”

“The greatest people that ever lived were also the greatest failures. They just didn’t let those failures affect them like they do most.”

“Strategy is figuring out what not to do.”

“Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".”

“I really like my life. I've arranged my life so that I can do what I want.”

“I know what I want to do and it makes sense to get going.”