Kevin O'Leary Quotes

I never, ever, ever let emotion get in the way of an investment.

I keep anywhere between 5-10 percent of my net worth in venture ideas.

When you're travelling, your day is jam-packed. I just don't have time to whip out a PC all the time. But I can whip out a BlackBerry and tweet. I keep a constant diary of where I'm at and why I'm there.

Money equals freedom.

Filming 'The Road to Riches' was surprisingly difficult for me. I learned that going back to career successes and failures can be emotionally exhausting as you are forced to revisit the euphoric highs and painful lows in high speed.

(On soft launches) It allows you to test your assumptions and see which ones you got right, and more, importantly, which ones you got wrong. A big hard launch is expensive. Getting even one thing wrong can force you to go out of business.

I see negotiations as an honest attempt to reach a deal that's great for everyone at the table. But sometimes, for whatever reason, that's impossible. You need to accept that possibility-don't make a deal for the sake of making a deal. If you do, chances are it will fall apart later anyway, with costs and headaches for everyone involved. And once you walk away, don't come back.

Imagine bringing Canada into a trillion-and-a-half of deficit. That's insane.

I'm not a tough guy. I'm just delivering the truth and only the truth and if you can't deal with it, too bad.

If a man could give birth it would be to a book - it's an 18-month gestation period.

If you want a friend, buy a dog.

When you come to 'Shark Tank,' the only person you should listen to is me, because you know you're getting the truth. I'll decide if it's worth it, and after I'm finished, the rest of the people can look into it.

There are a lot of idiot fund managers out there who add no value to the process at all.

Once Michigan stood proud. In addition to GM, Ford and Chrysler, it was home base for the United Auto Workers, a powerful escalator transporting hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers into America's middle class.

Protecting Americans from harm goes beyond police and national defense. It's imperative that we not destroy the commons, the physical environment on which we rely.

The only reason to do business is to make money; that's the only reason for doing business.

Know everything about the companies and people you are going to be negotiating with. Insist on getting the names of everyone participating in the negotiations. Leave no stone unturned; find out as much as you can.

Being an employee is a bad outcome. You want to avoid that. Being an employee is never a good outcome. That's just an opinion.

Life is hard, money doesn't care, your tears don’t add value

For whatever reason somebody can be convinced to buy a PC, it opens up a whole new market for all of us in the software business.

When I turned 50, something clicked in my head and I said, 'I'm not going to live to 100. I'm half-cooked already.' I set the family down and I said, 'Listen everybody, we're now entering the decade of Daddy. We're going to start doing things that I want to do.

Downturns are the best time to start businesses because you develop discipline that's very lean and mean in terms of how to spend money. And those habits serve you very well in good times.

I'm not trying to make friends, I'm trying to make money.

I like gold because it is a stabilizer; it is an insurance policy.

Basically, if you're a young Canadian now and Trudeau puts this country into $1.5 trillion in debt, you will never have the opportunity that I had as a young Canadian.

The biggest mistake entrepreneurs can make is trying to do everything themselves. They usually blow up when they try. I did an inventory of every deal I've ever done and it turned out that every single deal I made money on was a partnership, and every colossal failure, where I lost millions, was something I tried to do by myself.

I remember failing reading in school at a young age, and you just kinda get left behind and I felt helpless.

Don't call me, I'll call you... I'm out.

People are aware of what I stand for through television. Nobody gets rich on TV but you build brand. That's what I'm attempting to do.

I want to spend my time at colleges and universities.

All we do is bring the debate from both sides, and let you as a viewer decide where you want to end up on the issue. That's very important. That's exactly what happens in 'Redemption Inc.'

Trump has been very, very open and clear on what he's going to do. He's going to make the U.S. very competitive on taxes, corporate and personal. He's eliminating policy on carbon and the regulatory environment on shale and energy and pipeline development. These are all things that Canada has to do and we no longer have a competitive environment to do them in. It manifests itself in the slow grind of our economy.

You either make it illegal, in which case you support a huge underground economy or you tax it within the limits people can afford.

If you put Canada into $1.5 trillion in debt and interest rates go up just 200 basis points, you cannot provide the services to 36 million people that were guaranteed to them in the social contract they have with Canada. That's a very, very scary prospect. You can't burden this economy with that much debt. The risk you take on is insurmountable. You have to assume for the next 50 years that rates don't go up? That's insane. That's irresponsible. That's stupid.

Television is the most interesting hobby I've ever had.

You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like.

Justin Trudeau is going to elect Kevin O'Leary. All he has to do is keep doing what he is doing.

Imagine how foolish you'd look if, like one clever salesman who once pitched to me, you tried to license your product to a big industry player without knowing they just launched a competing product. With the right background research, he could have avoided that and other landmines - and so can you.

I look at Twitter as brand building.

I have great people working for me now. I surround myself with smart people.

My worst fashion faux pas: probably orange shoes with white pants. I thought I looked spectacular.

I'm not going to leave Canada, I'm going to fix it.

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues.

What I'm trying to do is immerse myself.

Vision is nothing without a plan to execute it.

If you put a woman in prison for four years when she's young and make her pay her time in a horrible place and she wants to come out and work, and become a mother and be a contributor to society and pay taxes and you never give her that chance. There is something un-Canadian about that.

Do you want to be rich or not? Let's get focused on that, buddy

I'm alarmed at what's happening in Canada. I'm vested here.