Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think if you look at the realm we're discussing, which is the political realm, I think it would be impossible to find an action by any politician intended to specifically favor either my firm or myself.
People are wired for lots of things. We're wired for novelty. We're wired for humor. We're wired for new pieces of information that surprise us in some way or add value to our lives. We're wired for fear.
I ended up staying 10 years in Boston. It was nine as GM but 10 years there. That seemed about right: long enough to try to make a difference and try to contribute to winning teams and some championships.
I use my interaction with both my kids to know how the youth today relates to technology, their expectations in terms of mobility and social solutions by customer services-oriented businesses like banking.
We started off with a set of objectives for what we needed to communicate with the company's identity, created several proposals intended to meet those objectives, and picked the one that did the best job.
The idea that the largest banks in the world would simultaneously fail, need government support, government guarantees, and/or government intervention to survive was not in my range of realistic scenarios.
Sometimes, when there's too much traffic clogging up the road you need to take a different route. But following the same path as everyone else can stall your progress in reaching your investment goals too.
When it comes to trying to manage how our entire planet-wide market and all the people and businesses in it deal with nature and our natural resources - we first and foremost need to change the incentives.
If your startup is only in the development or idea stage, there is almost no better predictor of failure - I mean, utter failure, scorched-earth bankruptcy - than raising too much money in the first round.
I don't think facing one of your own active pitchers would be a good idea, unless I got super lucky and hit a ball through the middle or something. That would not be good. I'd pull every muscle in my body.
Even over time, with a stable coaching staff and one manager who is fantastic and been in place for a long time, you can't ever defer and stay out of the clubhouse because you don't want to get in the way.
It was the most emphatic display of selflessness I have seen on a football field. Pounding over every blade of grass, competing as if he would rather die of exhaustion than lose, he inspired all around him.
I bet him he wouldn't get 15 league goals and I'm going to have to change my bet with him. If he gets to 15 I can change it and I am allowed to do that because I'm the manager. I'm going to make it 150 now!
At a very high level, demographics are going to help us on this, because sooner or later, people who have actually played games are going to be in most of the decision-making positions in the Western world.
One component of the leading economic indicators is the yield curve. Bond investors keep a close eye on this, as it illustrates the spread or difference between long-term interest rates and short-term ones.
When the venture capital industry invests, it's usually because they sense there is money in them hills. And often it takes a high-profile winner to wake everyone up in the category. SpaceX is that company.
It is important always to make full use of opportunities that come your way, and at the same time, it is important to not just cope with the challenges but try and convert each challenge into an opportunity.
Whatever you shoot is dead for a while before it starts to stink. The same goes for strategies. How many organizations carry this dead thing around with them, unaware of its irrelevancy until it is too late?
As a nation, we owe a great deal to the National Audubon Society, one of our most distinguished and important environmental organizations, and all those who work to protect America's open land and waterways.
Like many entrepreneurs, I never have two days that are alike. One thing that's consistent is I wake up early, around 4:30 A.M. It's my most productive time of day because I can think and work uninterrupted.
SpaceX is very unusual. I don't know of any other startup where the founder put in $100 million of his own money before looking for any outside capital. They have wildly exceeded any reasonable expectations.
If we think a playoff spot's not in the cards, there will be no concern for appearances or cosmetics whatsoever. We'll continue to address our future and trade off some pieces that would keep us respectable.
India's growth drivers are actually two growth drivers. One is consumption, which arises out of our demographic advantage. And the other is the investments. Because we need a lot of investment in the country.
It's not easy to have it all. Frankly, you know, you have to give as much to the career that the career requires and, at the same time, you have to give as much to the family as the attention that's required.
Quantitatve easing is NOT going away. Every major country is running a deficit. If they are all net borrowers then who is the lender? The central banks. For this reason – QE is not going away for a long time.
The bad news is that most traditional VCs have a youth bias that they will state very overtly. You always wonder if that's a self-fulfilling prophecy or if it's something about the nature of those businesses.
It's great news. The reality of negotiations today is that they take time. But these have always been conducted in a good spirit and we are very pleased with the outcome. We can now look forward to the future.
The MBA entrance exams are so quantitative-oriented that it keeps out more and more women from joining the MBA classes. If we were to make the entrance exams more all-rounded, you could see more participation.
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but its pretty much the whole game today.
To create an organization that's adaptable and innovative, people need the freedom to challenge precedent, to 'waste' time, to go outside of channels, to experiment, to take risks and to follow their passions.
The danger is to cling to comfort and custom at a time when events demand breaking away from both. But it is also foolish to jump at every startling moment. Darwin selects primarily for prudent fast-following.
To enter the maintsteam market is an act of aggression. The companies who have already established relationships with your target customer will resent your intrusion and do everything they can to shut you out.
Walk across any of the trading floors - they are full of 29-year-old kids. The capital markets of America are controlled by a bunch of right-out-of-business-school young guys who haven't really seen that much.
David Beckham is Britain's finest striker of a football not because of God-given talent but because he practises with a relentless application that the vast majority of less gifted players wouldn't contemplate.
Let me talk about what the banks are doing, and I think the banks have been working to make sure that, as much as possible, we move the currency to the smaller areas and to as many set of customers as possible.
Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.
Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.
If organized religion has become less relevant, it's not because churches have held fast to their creedal beliefs - it's because they've held fast to their conventional structures, programs, roles and routines.
If you ever want to eat a tuna sandwich again, don't go to a tuna factory. I visited one where they had two lines: one was the human food line and one was the cat food line - and they didn't look any different.
Elon Musk is an incredibly prolific entrepreneur, having come up with, or been at the founding team of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, PayPal, all different industries that seem to have nothing to do with each other.
I tend to solicit opinions from all those around me. I like to hear opinions and the rationale behind it from everybody in the room. Perhaps it's the result of going to law school and using the Socratic method.
Any of our businesses will not exist in the form that is today, will not exist in the same form one year later, two years later... We have to worry about the disruptions in the business models and the practices.
My favorite memories growing up in North Carolina were hunting and fishing with my father and brothers. There, I developed a deep appreciation for protecting land and waterways. There, I learned outdoorsmanship.
What we want to do is put a price on greenhouse gases. Because if they're more expensive, businesses will find a way to be more efficient or switch to solar or hydro or wind power. So that will reduce emissions.
I've always been fascinated by the brain. I wrote a lot about brain-tech in my first non-fiction book, 'More Than Human.' So when I decided to write science fiction, that was the technology I gravitated towards.
Opportunities change, strategies change, but people and psychology do not change. If trend-following systems don’t work well, something else will. There’s always money being lost, so someone out there has to win.
It's almost sickening now that the regulators 'on the beat' while the biggest credit collapse in modern financial history unfolded are now patting themselves on the back for their 'brave' stance on short-selling!
I've long loved emerging markets airlines because they usually sell at bargain prices. The troubled history of developed market airlines unfairly taints these stocks. In the emerging world, they're growth stocks.
On Wall Street, the industry in which I grew up, a culture in which 'my word is my bond' shifted over the past few decades toward one where the big print can say 'Free' while the small print gives the real costs.
I used to follow people home. I just like being anonymous so much that I would follow people home because they didn't know who I was, and I could watch them. I know how that sounds. I could not exist but observe.