I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.

There's absolutely no limit to what plain, ordinary, working people can accomplish if they're given the opportunity and encouragement to do their best.

Capital isn't hard to find; intuition, yes.

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college. I did it when I carried my papers. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them, I would call them by name, but even if I didn't I would still speak to them. Before long, I probably knew more students than anybody in the university, and they recognized me and considered me their friend.

Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.

Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitor.