Great opportunities almost never fit your schedule.

One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.

The thing that changes your professional life, your capabilities, your learning, your understanding, your opportunity flow, your ability to make things happen, is the center relationships you have with powerful and effective people around you in the industry, in the activity that you want to be doing.

Times of economic crises can change what the competitive landscape looks like, because when, for example, you have boom times, capital is easy to come by, growth is easy, sometimes what you focus on is, you know, how to accelerate in the boom. During economic crises, the question is, the companies that come out of, you know, that are sailing through that with the best liquidity, both assets on the balance sheet, making money, ability to grow their businesses, get a disproportionate competitive advantage.

One of the great strengths of American culture is this empowerment of individual, is the individual being able to be entrepreneurial, create new things. But you create a whole group of people to make great companies. It's employees and investors and customers and partners. The fabric of society, of a network of relations, is key to being successful.

It's better to be the best connected than the most connected.

I think most of [people] are not very well educated themselves to understand the Winston Churchill line - democracy is the worst of all governments until you consider all the other ones.