Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I hope and believe all the people that worked very closely with me at BHS for all those years, and some for the whole journey, will know it was never my intention for the business to have the ending it did.
People who acquire things beyond their usefulness not only will derive little or no marginal gains from these acquisitions, but they also will experience negative consequences, as with any form of gluttony.
Due to my business commitments, I am faced with time constraints and have not been able to personally spend as much time as I would like on my causes. These efforts are handled by my team of several people.
We are all the same. Some people wear vests and live in Missouri, and some people wear tuxes and live in Hollywood. But we all talk about what's going on in the news. We have relationships. We make mistakes.
I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company.
I've broken probably every major bone in my body. I currently have, in my body, fifteen pins and a plate. I've broken my femur, both wrists, both ankles - my left ankle twice. My tibia. Tore my rotator cuff.
Making money is marvelous, and I love doing it, and I do it reasonably well, but it doesn't have the gripping vitality that you have when you deal with the happiness of human life and with human deprivation.
My family are big philanthropists, but not at putting big money into sport. Today sport is professional. It has to support itself or it won't exist. It cannot depend on a few wealthy people making donations.
The software industry has to become better in componentization. That's a clear focus for most of the software companies. How components look, how they are maintained, the ability to maintain them separately.
To understand KKR, I always like to say, don't congratulate us when we buy a company. Any fool can buy a company. Congratulate us when we sell it and when we've done something with it and created real value.
If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that's what I'd like to do and that's what I hope to do.
We can't wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.
I am someone who tweets about what I have for breakfast, what I have for lunch, what I have for dinner, and for 99.99999 percent of the world, it's useless. It's meaningless. But for my mother, she loves it.
Business gives you a massive high. Doing a great deal, coming up with an inspirational solution... It's very addictive. But it doesn't last long. In isolation, it's a bit sterile. It doesn't reward the soul.
The Japanese always started with the market share of components first. So one would dominate, let's say, sensors, and someone else would dominate memory, and someone else hard drives and things of that sort.
Over the last several quarters we have been growing faster in Asia and Europe than any other place on the planet. We have 18 percent of the global PC share, about 12 percent in Europe, and 8 percent in Asia.
We had the same doomsday people when we were building the MGM Grand, same people, same doomsday. You have to ask a lot of questions and listen to people, but eventually, you have to go by your own instincts.
If it had anything to do with the PC or networking industry I was on top of it. I bought manuals. I read every book and magazine. Then I would get involved with industry conferences and put myself out there.
When you're faced with a choice, you have one of three choices that you can have. You can have those with power decide. You can have one man, one vote. Or you can have believability-weighted decision-making.
If someone comes into your house and does fked-up things to your kids and your wife, you're going to be capable of things you never imagined. Because it's in there. It might be lying dormant, but it's there.
If you do the same thing as others, it will wear you out. Nintendo is not good at competing so we always have to challenge the status quo by making something new, rather than competing in an existing market.
So much time and attention has been spent on streaming that we've really gotten away from some of the things that we could have, energywise, put into working together with radio more closely for terrestrial.
Accessible design is good design - it benefits people who don't have disabilities as well as people who do. Accessibility is all about removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.
In many ways I think the company's doing quite a good job. If you look at the transition to Office 365 we started when I was there, I'm excited about that and I think the company's doing a great job on that.
I lost 80 percent of my wealth and then gave away over half of the rest. So I'm a man of modest means now. But if you budget carefully and watch your expenditures, you can get by on a couple billion dollars.
Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.
It is possible to learn more than your doctor knows, particularly in key areas that specifically apply to you. In fact, you may discover material that your doctor never saw, or did see and never investigated.
And then lo and behold IBM, Apple and Motorola took an ad in all the newspapers, double page ad, and said, announcing the chip that they were now able to manufacture it and that they were going to kill Intel.
If you've got a dirty job, the best way is to help each other and then you'll create this culture of mutual benefit. And then you've got to understand who your customer is and create value for them and so on.
For business to survive over a long period, it needs to be contributing to society and people's well-being. Otherwise, who's going to want it? Otherwise you end up like Enron or some of these other companies.
I believe that people of substantial wealth potentially create problems for future generations unless they themselves accept responsibility to use their wealth during their lifetime to help worthwhile causes.
You always think as an organization, obviously if you're in sports, you want to be with ESPN. ESPN is it. But you don't really realize how good ESPN is and how big their platform really is until you're in it.
Consumer groups fought hard to provide investor protections for 'special entities' such as pension funds, schools, and municipalities who purchase swaps. No comparable protection exists in the futures market.
At times, to make progress, you end up offending people. And people were offended by many things I have done over the years. But I did what I felt was right, especially from an art and creative point of view.
I was very clear why we put these companies together and what our goals were. It was really to allow both Sears and Kmart to compete in what I thought was going to be a more challenging but evolving industry.
It's way easier to stay in the comfort zone, especially when things are going good than to go out on a limb and take some risks. My philosophy is exactly the opposite: Sometimes it's risky not to take a risk.
So I picked a field where I had a little exposure. Where I thought I could have an enormous challenge, and have a chance to really do some good, to be a pioneer in an area, and not just be like everyone else.
Show (don't tell) your customers that you have good quality by actually delivering fresh coffee and tea. Intelligent people are active recipients of information, and prefer to reach conclusions by themselves.
I wanted to do my part to help preserve that golden age of travel... I step aboard The Patron Tequila Express railcar, and I go back in time to the days when a long journey was something fun and very special.
One thing about Apple is they have these fanboys - as I always say, 'Sell to the people who love us.' For example when they came up with iPad mini, everyone who had an iPad went out and bought a mini as well.
As you overcome adversity in your life, you will become stronger. Then you will be better able to help others -those who are working, in their turn, to find a safe harbor from the storms that rage about them.
People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don't like change. A bunch of people don't like the Olympics now because we've added skateboarding... We're modernizing the sport.
When you post something, when you text something, you lose ownership of it when you hit enter or send. Who you send it to, where you post it, they take ownership of that information whether you like it or not
Many people you think are individual achievers in fact have either a strong spousal partner over many years or a business partner who's either in the background, not given enough publicity or less egocentric.
I'm paid about 20 times more than the average Ryanair employee and I think the gap should be wider. I probably work 50 times harder. I think I'm the most underpaid and underappreciated airline boss in Europe.
You are going to be measured anyway by some means, fair or foul. Usually the one doing the measuring has nothing specific in mind; so he does it by the seat of his pants. Careers are destroyed in this manner.
You have to move in life, but the loyalty you develop in a community is always remembered. But if you leave, you don't pick it up in the next town. It's not an add-on, you know, because you lose what you had.
I'd still say that visiting the stores and listening to our folks was one of the most valuable uses of my time as an executive. But really, our best ideas usually do come from the folks in the stores. Period.
Most of our artists are songwriters, so the songs are still central to all this. If you don't have great songs, it doesn't matter the marketing or how many times you are on TV; you can only polish it so much.
So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.