“Never was wealth the driver for me. – it was always hey, there's a cool idea here, let's make something of it. It was nice to be well rewarded, but the interesting part was working the problem, thinking about new things and how to bring them forward from being ideas to being products or new ways of doing things.”— Steve Ballmer
The quote archive
A growing archive of 3,000+ moments, drawn from every interview.
You cannot get rid of identities, but you can reform them. You can take a form of identity that's been historically associated with repression and hierarchy, and make it more egalitarian – that's what we've been trying to do with gender.
— Kwame Anthony AppiahPhilosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor
In today's United States, asking a republican parent if it was OK for their daughter to marry a democrat would elicit a response similar to asking parents years ago if their daughter could marry a black person – the polarization is astounding.
— Kwame Anthony AppiahPhilosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor
Identities are useful – if you had to make everything up in your life, from the start, with no input whatsoever – that wouldn't be freedom – you'd be less free; you'd have to think constantly about what you should or should not do. There would be no structure for your life choices.
— Kwame Anthony AppiahPhilosopher, Cosmopolitanism Advocate & Princeton University Professor
Success really is a team sport. There are very few successful people who competed the journey solo, and figured out how to do everything themselves.
— Stephen A. SchwarzmanCo-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist
Speed and pace are important – the circumstances that brought people to the table can change over time, nothing is forever, nothing is static.
— Stephen A. SchwarzmanCo-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist
I've always felt negotiation is pretty-easy. You have to look at any situation from the perspective of all sides, and find a zone of fairness in between.
— Stephen A. SchwarzmanCo-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist
Excellence is almost a tactile feeling – and it starts with a vision… sometimes a vision that shows you a path that's so good that it cannot not succeed.
— Stephen A. SchwarzmanCo-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist
Excellence means you do the absolute best you can in every situation that you face. It's an aesthetic concept, a performance concept, and helps you create the most perfect balance for success.
— Stephen A. SchwarzmanCo-Founder and CEO of Blackstone, Major Philanthropist
You start by asking yourself certain questions: who am I? what is it that wants to know who I am? What do I want for myself and the world? What is my purpose? What gives me meaning and purpose in life?
— Deepak ChopraWellness Entrepreneur & Author Promoting Mind-Body Medicine and Spirituality
I do not talk about life and death – I talk about birth and death, they are opposites, and life is simply a continuum of both, and you cannot have one without the other.
— Deepak ChopraWellness Entrepreneur & Author Promoting Mind-Body Medicine and Spirituality
Most people run around like biological robots, as if we are an algorithm not a being. We become the predictable outcomes of the conditioned reflexes of our nerves, constantly triggered by people in reaction to circumstances.
— Deepak ChopraWellness Entrepreneur & Author Promoting Mind-Body Medicine and Spirituality
In higher states of consciousness, we also lose our fear of death. The transcendent you is not in time. Only thought exists in time… only perception exists in time…
— Deepak ChopraWellness Entrepreneur & Author Promoting Mind-Body Medicine and Spirituality
When you start questioning and be mindfully aware of your thoughts, you realise that you are an observer of your thoughts, not the originator. You can then extend that observer experience to emotions, sensations, perceptual experience and every aspect of mental space.
— Deepak ChopraWellness Entrepreneur & Author Promoting Mind-Body Medicine and Spirituality
The reason for having leadership is to be found in the social nature of man. As an individual being man has the ability to act and to direct his own behaviour. But man lives in a society with a complex structure in which the actions of many individuals within groups in a variety of situations have to be directed.
— JJ DegeneaarOur entire civilisation is a manifestation of the complex inner worlds we carry with us. Everything around us, our buildings, cultures, politics, economies, statues, art and music are reflections of who we were, are and want to be.
— Jon Kabat-ZinnFounder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program
For thousands of years, the religions, movements and philosophers of the various iterations of 'us' have espoused mindfulness as being an essential life-skill, bringing us from wherever we may be to the here and now- where we are at our most alive.
— Jon Kabat-ZinnFounder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program