Michael Bloomberg quotes: the former New York City mayor and business billionaire, Mike Bloomberg gives us these gems.
“Progress is not inevitable. It’s up to us to create it.”
“In the game of life, when the final buzzer sounds, the only stat you carry with you is the number of assists you made.”
“Entrepreneurship is having an idea to do something great and not entirely have a plan on how to do it… but the drive and willpower to make it work.”
“Being an entrepreneur isn’t really about starting a business. It’s a way of looking at the world: seeing opportunity where others see obstacles, taking risks when others take refuge.”
“After hard work, the biggest determinant is being in the right place at the right time.”
“If you are honest with yourself and if you want to like what you see in the mirror, you have to say what you really believe.”
“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.”
“If someone tells me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to find another mountain.”
“Nobody wants a job where they don’t have authority to go along with the responsibility. Quite the contrary. The more authority you give people, the better people you can attract, and the harder they’re going to work, and the more loyal they are going to be.”
“Life is too short to spend your time avoiding failure.”
“In business, when you fail at something, when something doesn’t work, you say, ‘Okay, we’ve learned that that’s not a path to go down.'”
“You must first be willing to fail – and you must have the courage to go for it anyway.”
“If you don’t encounter setbacks in your career, if you don’t have doubts and disappointments, let me tell you, you’re not dreaming big enough.”
“There will be ups, there will be downs, there will be sideways. I can just tell you I have been hired, I have been fired, I have been lauded, I have been vilified. I’ve said some of the most brilliant things that just by accident appeared on my tongue, and I’ve said some of the dumbest things that you could imagine. But each day – even the day that I knew I was going to be fired – I looked forward to because I’ve always believed that tomorrow was going to be the best day of my life.”
“The next day after I got fired, literally the next day, I started a new company.”
“What I’m trying to do is to create excitement. So people looking at the Bloomberg’s office building say, ‘My goodness, what’s going on here? There’s something different about this company.’ You want the employees to get psyched. And it’s a chance to meet each other. My job is to get people to work together. With free food and no offices, even for Bloomberg, this might be considered one of the world’s great corporate headquarters.”
“Getting the job done has been the basis for the success my company has achieved.”
“Is your company so small you have to do everything for yourself? Wait until you’re so big that you can’t. That’s worse.”
“Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities and don’t let the bastards get you down.”
“We will go forward… we will never go back.”
“Buy what’s deliverable, not what could be.”
“And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend. And if they don’t spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.”
“What you’ve got to do is be honest. Say what you believe. Give it to them straight. Just don’t wuss out.”
“I’ve always respected those who tried to change the world for the better, rather than just complain about it.”
“I never liked anyone who didn’t have a temper. If you don’t have a temper, you don’t have any passion.”
“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.”
“You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”
“You can’t sit there and worry about everything.”
“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.”
“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
“I know a con when I see one.”
“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.”
“Most people won’t have opportunity to do full-time service, but those lucky enough to have monetary wealth or some spare time really can make an enormous difference. As someone who’s now in the public sector, and is seeing up-close-and-personal the real impact of what we do and what we give, I can tell you: every dollar and every volunteer help, in more ways than you can count.”
“The truth of the matter is: you can create a great legacy, and inspire others, by giving it to philanthropic organizations.”
“I was the one of those students who made the top half of the class possible.”
“I like what I see when I look in the mirror. If I get sentimental, I look and say, ‘Uh. It’s a bad day. They beat up on me.’ This, that, and the other thing. But ya know? We’ve spent one billion trying to convince people to not smoke. It’s been phenomenally successful. We’ve probably saved millions of lives. There aren’t many people that have done that. So, you know, when I get to heaven, I’m not sure I’m gonna stand for an interview. I’m going right in.”
“When I came into office, people said, ‘Billionaire? How do they live? What do they eat? How do they sleep?’ Today, they see me on the subway coming uptown. A couple of people say hi, some people smile and nod. Some people just sleep. It’s not an issue.”
“I have the best job I could possibly have.”
“Stubborn isn’t a word I would use to describe myself; pigheaded is more appropriate.”
“I like the theater, dining, and chasing women. Let me put it this way: I am a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan. It’s like a wet dream.”
“I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”
“I am what I am and, you know, I’m a very lucky guy.”
Don’t forget, peep Donald Trump and Ross Perot quotes before you bounce.
