Alexander The Great Quotes

If you build that foundation, both the moral and the ethical foundation, as well as the business foundation, and the experience foundation, then the building won`t crumble.

You only have one thing to sell in life, and that`s yourself.

Look, don`t congratulate us when we buy a company, congratulate us when we sell it. Because any fool can overpay and buy a company, as long as money will last to buy it.

Maybe its because my father was so successful in a totally different field, but I found working in a small environment just a great joy.

I thought at the time that I wanted to go into institutional sales, selling stocks and bonds to institutions. In those days, which was the 1960s, the institutional salesman was making about $100,000 a year. I thought that was just an enormous amount of money.

I want people who will stand up to me. People who are not afraid to say exactly what`s on their minds, even though that`s probably not what I want to hear. That`s what I want.

It`s not just buying the company. Sure, we picked the right companies, and we picked the right management and, most importantly, we`ve given them the right incentive to perform.

I love the ability to work with very good managers, and to provide the right incentives for them, and truly become a partner with that management, and make that management take a long view.

I have, in my partner George Roberts, a person who is the most wonderful man in the world to me. He`s like a brother to me. Creating with him, being side by side with him, in whatever we try to do, is a real pleasure to me.

Since we formed the firm in 1976, we`ve bought some 38 different companies, and we spent about $65 billion, buying these different companies.

My father wanted me to go into the oil business. He was in the oil and gas business as a consulting petroleum engineer up in Tulsa.

And make sure that capital structure we have in place is the right capital structure. I think that`s the reason that we`ve been successful.

It`s one of the most important things at the end of the day, being able to say no to an investment.

I always like to refer managers in corporate America as the renters of the corporate assets, not the owners.

One, I love the creativity. I love the ability to create a capital structure that is appropriate for a company, no matter what field it happens to be in.

I was an economics major in college, and every summer after school, I would drive my car from California, from Claremont men`s college at the time, to New York. And I worked on Wall Street.

My next summer I worked in the research department of Goldman Sachs, and my last summer I was in institutional sales and corporate finance.

As I said there is nothing wrong with failing. Pick yourself up and try it again. You never are going to know how good you really are until you go out and face failure.

But once you buy a company, you are married. You are married to that company.

The trouble, in my opinion, with corporate America today, is that everything is thought of in quarters.

I really went there because it was very strong in economics and political science, and those were the two areas that I wanted to focus my future on.

In hindsight, I wouldn`t trade it for anything. It`s been just a phenomenal career for me so far, and I don`t see any reason why I should change.

If you have something at risk, you think differently.

If we can just take a few companies, and use those as models, as examples, to show the rest of corporate America how they can become more competitive, that`s what I`d like to do and that`s what I hope to do.

So I picked a field where I had a little exposure. Where I thought I could have an enormous challenge, and have a chance to really do some good, to be a pioneer in an area, and not just be like everyone else.

I`ve been in a hurry all my life. I`ve been in a hurry to succeed, and in a hurry to prove myself.

If you don`t have integrity, you have nothing. You can`t buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.

Our job really begins the day we buy the company, and we start working with the management, we start working with where this company is headed.