When you coach and teach leadership, most people think about them. It's like you're the leader and how do you influence them. Clearly, leaders do take their followers, their flock, their enterprise, their business - whatever - hopefully to a better place. But I think the foundation of what makes really great leaders is they lead themselves, and they're conscious about knowing themselves and coaching and leading themselves in a very profound way. The simplest of us talk to ourselves. The question is, "Do we really lead ourselves?"

I was single for most of my life. The best thing that happened to me is my wife. I've got four kids. All of them go to Harvard. Much better than their dad. They're really bright kids.

You’re not going to be a 1.000 hitter all the time. You’re going to be more wrong than right. You just have to correct your errors as quickly, as economically, as possible.

What makes you tick? Why do you care about the things you care about?

Growing up, I knew you were supposed to have a profession - and something better than being a shopkeeper, which is what my parents were.

"What would people say about you when you're gone?" That to me was a very important question. I thought about that for a couple of years and said, "What people say about you when you're gone doesn't matter. You're gone." What really matters is, "What do you say about yourself in the here and now? Are you proud of what you're doing?" If you had a short lease and it ended today, or it ends tomorrow, what would you wish you would have done? You better do it.

A woman at the Limited once asked me, 'Why do you work?' She said, 'You made a lot of money as a young man, so why are you still working?' I had never thought about it before. Forced to consider it, I told her, 'You know why? Because I think that if you stop to smell the roses, you'll get hit by a truck.