Michael Bloomberg Quotes

Someone once described the information business as exactly the opposite of sex. When it's good, it's still lousy.

I'd be happy to provide advice if anybody asked me no matter who the President is.

We have always had, remember, small groups of both parties that split off. There were the "blue dog Democrats." There were the "Dixie Democrats." Democrats were never going to, ever again, pull together.

I was a Democrat before I was a Republican before I became an independent and I never changed my principles.

The estate taxes, on balance, are good. They get people to give money to charity, and they prevent these family dynasties which keep other people from having opportunities. It may be good for a family, but for society it's probably not good. And I've always been in favor of having an estate tax.

Life is too short to spend your time avoiding failure.

You don't make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you're-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don't know what's going to happen.

If people are not smoking, they'll probably be drinking more.

Organizing around a common interest is a fundamental part of democracy. We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to a secret ballot.

I've always thought if we don't want to enforce laws on the books, we should remove them from the books. But when you have laws, you breed contempt if you don't enforce them.

I think that most of the candidates [for presidency] can't run the railroad, and I still worry that whoever gets elected will have policies designed for political rather than practical reasons.

We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

Progress is not inevitable. It's up to us to create it.

I tend to be reasonably blunt, maybe a little bit too much. But I just- I always respected people that tell the truth. And I've always wanted people to tell me the truth.

There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life.

Millions of Americans have contributed to building a stronger Israel; I've been proud to be one of them. Last year, I went to Jerusalem to help dedicate in my father's name a new MDA medical facility which treats people of all faiths and all nationalities absolutely equally.

The system [in U.S.] is designed for a two-party system. And those two parties have an interest in keeping third parties out. There's too much of the structure that works in the two-party way. They will keep the third party out.

The main claim to fame, I think, of Bernie Sanders - who I've never met; I'm sure he's a pleasant guy - [is that] he's certainly not stupid.

My personal view is, why don't you get out there and try to do something about the things that you don't like, create the jobs that we are lacking, rather than just yell and scream. But if you want to yell and scream, we'll make sure you can do it.

And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.

Buy what's deliverable, not what could be.

I was the one of those students who made the top half of the class possible.

We're America, and we have to stop worrying about what happens overseas, and to be optimistic, even though nobody should think we're not going to have some difficult times.

Donald Trump says he wants to run America like he's running his business? God help us.

I don't know why people carry guns. Guns kill people.

I don't know why you should be proud of something. It doesn't make you any better or worse. You are what you are.

My father, a bookkeeper who never earned more than $11,000 a year in his life, sat there, writing out a $25 check to the NAACP. When I asked him why, he said discrimination against anyone is discrimination against us all. And I never forgot that. Indeed, his philanthropy was a gift, not just to that organization, but to me.

You can't define what's middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor.

Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody's got to pay for them so they're a necessary evil.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It's not politically viable; it's not morally right; it's just not going to happen.

I make no secret of the fact that I was not a big Hillary Clinton supporter, but I thought in the two-way race between her and Donald Trump, that she should have been the president. But Trump promised a lot of things. And now he's six months in and hasn't passed a piece of legislation yet. Now, I personally have said we should help him. I didn't vote for him. I didn't think he was the right person. But once we have an election and he gets elected, then we have a responsibility as citizens to help him.

This is the city of dreamers and time and again it's the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.

I think it's a sign that the establishment is going to have to change. For too long they never thought about the average person, because the average person is not organized.

Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.

People use so much more health care when they live longer.

The Russian economy is way down because of the price of oil, and because the USSR was a big chunk of it.

[Jeb Bush] could, as I describe it, run the railroad.[John] Kasich could run the railroad. Hillary Clinton can run the railroad. Running the railroad is the most important thing. You have got 4 million employees; you've got to make the system work, and it doesn't work very well.

You can bet - a good chance of Hillary [Clinton], a good chance of [Donald] Trump - but not 100% in either case.

Central planning didn't work for Stalin or Mao, and it won't work for an entrepreneur either.

I'm trying to change the culture in New York City; that's hard enough!

I think fully, that an independent candidate can't win in this country. The Constitution is structured for basically a two-party government, a two-party race.

You can't sit there and worry about everything.

The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.

I've always wondered if people who block each other from expressing their opinions do so because they have so little confidence in their own. To me, encountering an opposing point of view is a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the issues at stake and develop my own point of view. But the first thing you've got to do is you've got to let people speak and you've got to listen. And that's what the first amendment is all about. That's what really distinguishes this country from others.

There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.

Working collectively and collaboratively is the difference between mediocrity by yourself or success as a team. You have to share the pain and the responsibility and if you do then you will also share in the rewards.

In the game of life, when the final buzzer sounds, the only stat you carry with you is the number of assists you made.

We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not.