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 you build that foundation, both the moral and the ethical foundation, as well as the business foundation, and the experience foundation, then the building won't crumble.

I thought at the time that I wanted to go into institutional sales, selling stocks and bonds to institutions. In those days, which was the 1960s, the institutional salesman was making about $100,000 a year. I thought that was just an enormous amount of money.

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.

I want people who will stand up to me. People who are not afraid to say exactly what's on their minds, even though that's probably not what I want to hear. That's what I want.

In the large buy out space, which is where we (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts) focus our efforts, there are relatively few firms with the capital, experience, infrastructure and networks to compete effectively with the large complex companies that we seek to acquire.

As I said there is nothing wrong with failing. Pick yourself up and try it again. You never are going to know how good you really are until you go out and face failure.