A list of our favorite quotes

Control your own destiny or someone else will.
Jack Welch

Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.
Jack Welch

Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
Jack Welch

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
Jack Welch

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
Jack Welch

Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital – the world’s best talents and greatest ideas.
Jack Welch

I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type.
Jack Welch

I’ve learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success.
Jack Welch

If GE’s strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.
Jack Welch

If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
Jack Welch

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
Jack Welch

My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
Jack Welch

Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.
Jack Welch

Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
Jack Welch

The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.
Jack Welch

The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.
Jack Welch

The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
Jack Welch

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.
George Soros

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.
George Soros

Bush’s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.
George Soros

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
George Soros

I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it.
George Soros

I think there’s a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they’re not sufficient because markets don’t look after social needs.
George Soros

I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.
George Soros

If the terrorists have the sympathy of people, it’s much harder to find them. So we need people on our side, and that leads us to be responsible leaders of the world, show some concern with the problems.
George Soros

Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.
George Soros

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
George Soros

Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It’s really a great invention and I wouldn’t under-estimate the value of that, but they’re not designed to take care of social needs.
George Soros

My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.
George Soros

Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics.
George Soros

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
George Soros

President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.
George Soros

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.
George Soros

Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
George Soros

Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.
George Soros

The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
George Soros

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
George Soros

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
Warren Buffett

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.
Warren Buffett

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
Warren Buffett

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
Warren Buffett

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
Warren Buffett

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
Warren Buffett

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
Warren Buffett

I am a huge bull on this country. We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.
Warren Buffett

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
Warren Buffett

I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
Warren Buffett

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
Warren Buffett

I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.
Warren Buffett

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
Warren Buffett

I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of – of American capitalism.
Warren Buffett

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
Warren Buffett

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.
Warren Buffett

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
Warren Buffett

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
Warren Buffett

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
Warren Buffett

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
Warren Buffett
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
Warren Buffett

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
Warren Buffett

It’s never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.
Warren Buffett

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Warren Buffett

Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
Warren Buffett

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
Warren Buffett

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
Warren Buffett

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
Warren Buffett

Our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Warren Buffett

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
Warren Buffett

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
Warren Buffett

Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
Warren Buffett

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
Warren Buffett

Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
Warren Buffett

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
Warren Buffett

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
Warren Buffett

The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
Warren Buffett

The only time to buy these is on a day with no “y” in it.
Warren Buffett

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
Warren Buffett